Google to close engineering offices

Recession seems to have started hurting search giant Google. In a statement on its official blog, Google Senior Vice President, Engin

eering and Research, Alan Eustace said the company was eliminating some engineering jobs at various locations across the world.

Eustace said that Google had been hiring "outstanding engineers in a wide mix of countries. Having offices distributed around the globe is critical to Google's long-term success, and today we have thousands of engineers working in 40 offices in more than 20 countries."

"It has enabled us to make significant improvements in our products and attract more users globally. It has also presented unique challenges. The most difficult of these being to coordinate our efforts across all geographies, and provide engineers with significant, meaningful projects that make a real difference to people's lives."

Eustace further said that the company in last September asked engineers in Phoenix, Arizona to move to other offices and now it is "doing the same thing in Austin, Texas; Trondheim, Norway; and Lulea, Sweden.

"Our strong desire is to keep as many of these 70 engineering employees at Google as possible. However, we do recognise the upheaval and heartache that these changes may have on Google families, and that we may not be able to keep 100 per cent of these exceptional employees."

"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," the official added.

Also, sensing that it does not need many people for its "reduced rate of hiring," Internet search giant Google is laying off about 100 employees from its recruitment team and has also terminated its contracts with the external hiring agencies, a company official said.

In a statement posted on the company's official blog, Google Vice-President, People Operations, Laszlo Bock said that "Google is still hiring but at a reduced rate.

"Given the state of the economy, we recognised that we needed fewer people focused on hiring," Bock said, following which it decided to "wind down almost all our contracts with external contractors and vendors providing recruiting services for Google."

Google offers cloud software to biz

Google is recruiting a sales force to offer the Internet firm's software to business customers worldwide who traditionally use Microsoft programmes.

Google will train people to pitch its Google Apps Premier Edition, an array of business software hosted online in what is referred to as "cloud services."
Cloud services such as spread sheets, word processing, and calendars are maintained and supported on Google computers and users access them when they wish by using the Internet.
Cloud services eliminate the need for packaged software to be installed and maintained on computers in homes or offices.Google has been steadily increasing its host of cloud services, with a basic array offered for free and a Premier Edition available at a cost of 50 dollars annually.

"Google Apps has reached a level of maturity where it is useful and valuable for almost any business" said Google president of enterprise Dave Girouard.
"This programme gives IT solution providers an easy way to introduce cloud computing to their service offerings, while helping more businesses make the transition to this new era of technology."
Google said it will teach "resellers" how to integrate Apps into customers' business operations and give them a 20 per cent break on the price that they can pass on to customers if they chose to do so.
The programme has been tested with more than 50 pilot partners. "We believe strongly that all companies will adopt SaaS (Software as a Service) to one degree or another, and Google's reseller programme empowers us to be experts in the cloud," said Tony Safoian, president of SADA Systems, an IT consulting firm.

"Reselling Google Apps opens up new opportunities via new conversations we could not have had with prospective clients as little as two years a

go."

Safoian said Google Apps can be an easy sell, given that letting the California technology firm handle software updates, maintenance and disaster recovery can cost businesses 75 per cent less than doing it themselves.

Google Apps is seen as a direct challenge to a Microsoft empire founded on selling packaged software for installation on people's machines.

Until now, Google had relied on its own team to sell businesses subscriptions to its cloud services. Schools and charity groups are able to use the software services free.

Microsoft has responded with its own move "into the cloud" and says that the Windows 7 operating system it is preparing for release has been crafted with that in mind.