Tag Archives: layoffs

Changes At Google

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Once upon a time everyone thought that Google was unstoppable. However, the worsening economy is taking its tole on search giant. The company has issued a number of official blog posts over the last week or so detailing the changes.

Google Video will no longer be accepting uploads shortly. No surprise there, actually, I’ve been wondering why this didn’t happen a long time ago. Google Video, IMO, should have been one thing… search for (and in) videos.

Google Notebook, a service that I actually love, will be stopping development. However the service will continue to work, for now. I guess with this service shutting down, I’ll have a reason to switch over to Evernote.

A number of services that Google picked up, but never really did anything with will also be getting the axe. Jaiku, Google’s service similar to Twitter and Plurk will be shutting down, and the code released as an open source Jaiku Engine under the Apache license.

Other fatalities include:
- Dodgeball, a mobile social networking service.
- Google Mashup Editor will quit working in about 6 months. Everything should be moved over to the App Engine.

That’s not all of the Google news. Google is also making changes to recruting and engineering. About 100 positions in the recruiting section are being eliminated, and 40 satellite engineering offices in 20 countries are being closed. No word on how many engineers that will impact.

As long as Google doesn’t mess with my Picasa, GMail, GDocs, GCal, or Grand Central I’ll be happy. Though I will miss Google Notebook.

Yahoo News Roundup

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It’s been a busy week for me, and there’s been a lot of Yahoo news going on. Rather than post about everything separately, I’ll throw it all into once nice post that way I can get on to bed (I told you The Invasion bored me!).

For whatever reason, Microsoft thought it’d be a good idea to make a bid to take over Yahoo. No one that I knew expected any government to accept the deal, and thankfully yesterday Yahoo officially rejected Microsoft. This announcement came after the rumor surfaced that Yahoo may be looking to merge into Time Warner’s fledgling AOL division. AOL-Time Warner-Yahoo? Suddenly, I liked the whole Microsoft idea better.

Not long after Yahoo dissed the company Gate’s built, Microsoft issued a press release stating that it was unfortunate that Yahoo decided to turn down an offer that would create a more effective company. I guess Microsoft’s idea of being effective is releasing crap software well past the original release date (Vista anyone?). Now it looks like Microsoft has hired a proxy firm in an attempt for a hostile takeover.

Meanwhile, Yahoo has begun to layoff some 1,000 employees. Among those out the door is Salim Ismail, who has lead Yahoo Brickhouse since early 2007. According to TechCrunch, Salim left voluntary. He’ll most likely create a small startup and get bought up by Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft. Any bets?

With all the take over talks, merger proposals, and the layoffs, you’d think that’d be enough for Yahoo. Nope, today they acquired Maven Networks for $160 million.

And that’s pretty much the gist of the Microsoft-Yahoo saga that’s gone on for the past few days. Oh yeah, Yahoo also had a couple software releases, but who cares about those right now.