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Rumored cuts hit low on the totem pole

Rumors of pending layoffs at Google's new acquisition, DoubleClick, suggest 15 percent of the ad serving company won't be dining on free Google grub.

It's accepted as a given that Google will pare back duplicate staffers brought on board with its $3.24 billion purchase of DoubleClick. Workers in the acquired company gained a short reprieve from this decision when the European Competition reviewers declined to fast-track their approval of the deal last year.

The rubberstamp arrived, to no one's real surprise after the Federal Trade Commission rolled over and begged for a tummy rub with its high-speed approval in the months prior to the EU's decision. That stamp now feels like a hammer, if Valleywag rumors prove correct:

A tipster with two friends at DoubleClick tells us Google will cut DoubleClick's staff by 15 percent, trimming the sales teams that push Dart for Advertisers and Dart for Publishers by 20 percent. Google plans to give those ad-targeting services to its advertisers for free, making money on brokering ads.

Google's desire to make money on the deal by brokering ads has been the whole point of their pursuit of DoubleClick. They managed to pick up the major ad display presence on the Internet in an effort to diversify itself off of a 99 percent plus revenue stream from its contextual ad business, one that has looked soft so far in 2008.

"YouTube is building out their national salesforce. Maybe they should just hire the DoubleClick salespeople that were just fired," the Clickety Clack blog suggested. From what we've seen of YouTube job postings on MediaBistro, YouTube is more interested in filling positions with temps rather than full-time staffers.