Original Article: Back in January, Microsoft announced that the company would be shedding as many as 5,000 jobs over an 18-month period. At that point they cut about 1,400. Now they’re entering phase 2, which would include somewhere within the difference of those two numbers.

In a statement, Microsoft said, "As part of the plan we announced in January to reduce costs and increase efficiencies, today we are eliminating additional positions across several areas of the company. While job eliminations are always difficult, we are taking these necessary actions in response to the global economic downturn."

The Microsoft Blog at SeattlePI.com shares an email from Steve Ballmer that was sent out to All Microsoft employees. Within the email, between the padding of explaining how difficult it is to let them go and the thanks for their contributions, Ballmer says:

Today’s action includes positions in the United States and in a number of countries around the world. In the U.S., affected employees will be notified directly by their managers today. In other countries, local leadership teams will provide more specific information about the impact to their organizations.

With this announcement, we are mostly but not all done with the planned 5,000 job eliminations by June 2010. We are moving quickly to reach this target in response to consistent feedback from our people and business groups that it’s important to make decisions and reduce uncertainty for employees as quickly as possible, and so that organizations can concentrate their efforts and resources on strategic objectives.

Sources say that Microsoft is still actively hiring between 2,000 and 3,000 workers this year, even as they continue the cuts they have planned. There’s no word on what branches of the company are being affected by the job cuts the most. 

The changes are all aimed at making the company more profitable, and one new area that they will be looking to hire in is a direct sales team. The company cites the following as its major priorities for the year:

- Rolling out new features to grow and engage our community

– Building on our advertising infrastructure

– Building on our successful partnership with Microsoft

– Ongoing sponsorship opportunities

– Ongoing publisher and trade partnerships

"I’m confident that with commitment and focus on these priorities, Digg will be an even stronger company in 2009 and will continue to create innovative features for our more than 35 million community members,"says Adelson. "I want to thank you all for your continued support and commitment – helping us achieve our vision of the democratization of media, and revolutionizing the way people consume and discover information online."

Adelson cites the company’s agenda as a "conservative approach" to its expansions plans and an aggressive plan to reach profitability within the year.

It will be interesting to see what comes out of the Microsoft deal, and how Digg will improve on its community engagement factor.

But the presentation shows that in December, Microsoft’s Real Estate and Facilities Team developed a scenario to estimate the company’s real estate needs under the assumption that the company’s work force would not grow for the next 2 1/2 years. Beyond then, the planners expected annual growth of 3 percent.

Last year, Microsoft increased the size of its work force by 16 percent. The company employs more than 94,000 people worldwide, including 40,000 in the Puget Sound region.

Doesn’t sound very promising for the next two and a half years does it? Microsoft is expected to announce these changes when it reports second quarter earnings Thursday.

There had been rumors that Microsoft would be laying off workers by January 15th, but nothing has come of that so far. Yahoo on the other hand is cutting 20% of its French staff.

Yahoo’s getting rid of 52 out of 251 people from its French headquarters according to Paid Content. This looks to consist mostly of engineers. "This is bittersweet as it was only in September that Yahoo made a song and dance about opening an R&D facility in the latter, an Alps town, at a lavish ceremony involving French government ministers," writes Paid Content’s Robert Andrews.

The company is also reportedly getting rid of Content Match in some parts of Europe.

- Uploading to Google Video
– Google Notebook
– Jaiku
– Google Catalog Search
– Mashup Editor
– Dodgeball

Now, some notes on each.

The Google Video Team is now encouraging users to upload their videos to either YouTube or Picasa, both of which are owned by Google of course. Uploading will still be available for a few months. They won’t be removing any content that is already there.

The Google Notebook team is encouraging users to try other Google Products with notebook-like functionality like SearchWiki,Google Docs, Tasks in Gmail, and Google Bookmarks. And they claim to have plenty of new ideas for these services.

Jaiku is shutting down before it ever really got going. It is a Twitter-like service that never left invite-only status. According to Read Write Web, "Google will release the Jaiku code under the open source Apache license, so that other organizations can pick up where the Google team left off. It is not clear if current users will be able to transfer their accounts."

Google Catalog Search just wasn’t popular enough to keep around, but the Book Search Team leaves it behind with fond memories. "Catalogs helped us better understand and refine the technology we use today to scan and make the full text of books available online," says Product Manager Punit Soni. "We also learned more about how users read scanned documents online, and how to best present this type of information to them."

Mashup Editor is another one that never really got off the ground. It is still only available in limited testing. Google encourages users to instead use the Google App Engine.

Dodgeball is a mobile social networking service. It will be shut down in the next couple months. Google says they will communicate the exact timeframe shortly.

A post on the Official Google Blog talks about the company consolidating some engineering offices, by shutting down Austin, Texas; Trondheim, Norway; and Lulea, Sweden locations, though they say they intend to keep as many of the employees as possible, and just have them move to other locations.

"Our long-term goal is not to trim the number of people we have working on engineering projects or reduce our global presence, but create a smaller number of more effective engineering sites, which will ensure that innovation and speed remain at our core," says Google Senior Vice President, Engineering and Research Alan Eustace.

Google also announced that they are trimming some recruiting jobs – about 100 of them. "Our first step to address this was to wind down almost all our contracts with external contractors and vendors providing recruiting services for Google. However, after much consideration, we have with great regret decided that we need to go further and reduce the overall size of our recruiting organization by approximately 100 positions," says Google’s Vice President of People Operations, Laszlo Bock.

Big changes through Google’s organization today indeed. As far as the services being shut down, I can’t say that I will particularly miss any of them, as I haven’t thrown them much use anyway. Will you miss any of these services?

As Frank Reed notes, "This practice avoids the online aggregators of these public records from being able to post the filing through their normal channels. I suspect these folks will have it sooner than later but the intentionality of Google providing the filing this way is curious. Trying to fly under the radar? Who knows."

So what does the filing contain?

Sources say that Google reports that it has 24,400 employees, 4,300 of which are interns, temps, and contractors. This is far less than than Google co-founder Sergey Brin said a few months ago. The number then for these types of workers was more like 10,000. Though Brin did note that some job cuts were on the way in this area.

Google Spokeswoman Jane Penner says that the number doesn’t necessarily reflect the total number of people cut by Google. I guess that means that some of them just quit.

Either way, it hardly sounds like downsizing, as Google also says that it plans to continue spending money on research and development as well as acquisitions "at a pace consistent with the past two years."

Hmm. I wonder what acquisitions are in store for this year.

• How to set up the meeting… walk to the employee’s desk and say:
“Thank you, Aaron, for coming in. I have some information regarding our organization that I want to tell you in person.” (…)

• (If needed) “This was a very difficult business decision supported by senior management.”
• (If needed) “The decision is final.”
• “I appreciate what you have done for Yahoo!” (…)

• Repeat information on what to do when they are finished with Right Management. “When you’re finished here please go to your desk and pack your personal belongings. Please let me know if you need any help as I will need to collect your company assets in the next two hours.”

[Via Friendfeed.]

Comments

The company fired about 1,000 workers in January this year. The company had about 14,300 employees worldwide at the end of June. With the economy being in the shape it is, some of this is the usual belt tightening, but for Yahoo, the issues are more dire. With the fallen MSFT deal, the Google (NSDQ: GOOG) search deal stuck in regulatory issues, competitive pressure increasing from all sides, and major slowdown in display advertising online, Yahoo’s time is running out on multiple fronts.

They’re definitely hoping that Google deal is approved by the Department of Justice. There’s no question that teaming up with their biggest competitor would bring the company a substantial amount of revenue. But with that deal that was supposed to be kicked off this month still in limbo, it’s got to be hard to look ahead to the future with any kind of certainty.

"Let’s just hope Yahoo isn’t dumb enough to announce the firings now and then wait until mid-December to actually make them," writes Henry Blodget at Silicon Alley Insider. "Let’s also hope the company doesn’t cut too few people and then have to go through the same horrific process again in Q1."

According to an inside finance source at Yahoo who spoke with Valleywag, they were indeed planning to wait until December. "Sounds almost like a typical corporate rumor, complete with dramatic and egregious ironies: The tipster says layoffs are planned for December 10, just four days after a multi-million-dollar company-wide Christmas party," our own Jason Miller commented. "Merry Christmas, you’re fired. Hope you saved enough to have at least a happy New Year, cuz we’re cutting out severances. Aren’t these ice sculptures swell?"

Just because Yahoo is cutting jobs doesn’t mean they’re not trying their damnedest to stay competitive. Not only will they be investing the money they make from the Google deal (if it goes through) into their search business, but they are already doing some interesting things to set themselves apart. Recently they have started integrating SearchMonkey applications into their search results. This means that third party developers are getting their own projects implemented into the search results for average Yahoo users, which could potentially open up all kinds of doors to increased relevancy.

Yahoo has also been trying some new things to keep users more interested in their properties, such as turning themselves into something of a social network by offering new profile pages and the ability to create "friendships" with other Yahoo users. This is not without its criticism. In fact, comments by WebProNews readers would indicate that this is a boring and lame attempt to cash in on the growing social media trend. Time will tell if it turns out to really work to the company’s advantage. Yahoo has had failed attempts into social media in the past.

None of these things matter much to the people losing their jobs though, and they’re simply joining the masses of Internet company employees going through the same thing. Other establishments who have recently announced staff reductions include Zillow, Pandora, and Gawker to name a few that come immediately to mind.

Seven consecutive quarters of profit drops have Yahoo nervous and investors itching for action on CEO Jerry Yang’s part. Rumored Yahoo job cuts had been hinted at being from 1,500 to 2,500 in number, possibly among poor performing Yahoo Europe operations.

However, a Bloomberg report, citing a person with knowledge of Yahoo’s job-cutting plans, claimed the number would be far less. Only 700 jobs face the executioner’s axe.

Yahoo isn’t talking yet, and probably won’t before the company announces earnings on January 29th. A cut of only 700 jobs likely won’t satisfy investors, according to Eric Savitz:

But I suspect the Street will find the news disappointing. Bernstein Research analyst Jeffrey Lindsay, for instance, has been saying for months now that the company ought to cut its headcount by as much as 25%. Meanwhile, Yahoo shares could come under pressure on Tuesday from big drops in Asian trading by shares of both Alibaba.com and Yahoo Japan; Yahoo holds big stakes in both companies.

In trading today, Yahoo had fallen 26 cents to $20.52 at press time. Much of the tech marker has followed the overall downward trend since the Fed cut interest rates by three-quarters of a point.

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