San Francisco— According to a December SEC filing, search and advertising titan Google Inc. is feeling the heat of recession, which prompted slashing down a large number of temporary workers at Google’s lavish campuses and the layoff of an unspecified number of its contractors. Google on Dec. 15, submitted a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, but it was prepared on paper, making it unavailable through the various Web services that track reports to the agency.
The search giant has declined to mention exactly how many contractors were cut and a Securities and Exchange Commission filing from mid-December, which surfaced Wednesday, did not shed further light on the matter.
Associated Press writer Michael Liedtke reported that the AP has managed to obtain SEC filing made by Google, which indicates the company has been cutting an undisclosed number of temporary workers on its payroll.
Google claims its motto is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Nevertheless the company submitted its filing on paper, thus making that information inaccessible to those seeking information about the company online.
According to the filing, Google currently employs about 4,300 interns, temporary workers and contractors.
The blogosphere immediately balled over on the figure after it was reported by The Associated Press as evidence that Google had cut almost 6,000 people, or as much as 20 percent of its total work force.
In an October article appeared in the San Jose Mercury News, Google co-founder Sergey Brin quoted as saying that Google had about 10,000 contractors in addition to its regular workforce. He called that number “really high” and said that the company had been mulling ways to reduce it since the spring of 2008.
However, both the figures are not promptly comparable because Google has different types of contractors, and the larger figure cited by Brin included all of the people who are employed by outside companies that provide Google with everything from gardening services to tech support.
Google spokesperson Jane Penner reiterated what she told the AP, which was that the workers mentioned in the SEC document represent a subset of the 10,000 cited by Brin and that one should not conclude that the difference between the two figures — 5,700 — represents the number of temp workers let go. She declined to offer further clarification about where Google was in its effort to reduce its temporary worker count, saying that the company was in a quiet period before its next earnings announcement.
Although one thing is quite apparent: Google’s cuts have been swift and startling. It has closed some of its famously free cafeterias, canceled a big company ski trip and scaled back traditional holiday gifts. Instead of giving employees $1,000 for holiday shopping, Google gave out mobile devices with a new Google-developed operating system and urged employees to eat the company’s “dog food” — in other words, use its products.
Google ranked seventh out of 11,000 companies in Glassdoor.com’s 2009 Employees’ Choice Awards for Best Places to Work, based on reviews submitted by a total of 75,000 employees. It ranked first in Fortune’s February 2008 100 Best Companies to Work For list.
