Google Plans to Lay Off 200 Workers

By Miguel Helft

Erin Siegal/Reuters Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif.

Google said Thursday that it would cut about 200 employees from its sales and marketing organization, the third and most significant round of layoffs at the company this year.

Google, which announced the layoffs in a blog post, said that the cuts would reduce overlap between different groups and speed up decision making.

Omid Kordestani, Google’s senior vice president for global sales and business development, said the cuts were meant to address mistakes the company had made during its phase of rapid growth. “In some areas we’ve created overlapping organizations which not only duplicate effort but also complicate the decision-making process,” Mr. Kordestani wrote on Google’s corporate blog. “That makes our teams less effective and efficient than they should be. In addition, we over-invested in some areas in preparation for the growth trends we were experiencing at the time.”

The cuts suggest that the deepening global recession is affecting some parts of Google’s business more severely than the company anticipated just two months ago. In January, after Google laid off 100 recruiters, Eric Schmidt, the company’s chief executive, said that deeper cut were unlikely. In February, the company cut another 40 positions when it closed its radio advertising efforts.

About 100 of the eliminated positions will be in the United States and the rest overseas, said Matt Furman, a Google spokesman. Mr. Furman said the company continued to hire new workers, albeit at a slow rate. In the fourth quarter of 2008, the company grew by 99 workers, ending the year with 20,222 full-time employees. In previous years, Google had added more than 2,000 people in a single quarter.

Laid-off workers will be given time to apply for other jobs within the company.

The layoffs this year are neither the first nor the largest in Google’s history. Last April, Google cut about 300 positions over the American operations of DoubleClick, which it acquired earlier in 2008.

fuente: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/google-plans-to-lay-off-200-workers/

Palm Posts a Loss for a 7th Quarter

Palm reported a wider third-quarter loss that fell short of analysts’ estimates.

The net loss expanded to $95 million, or 89 cents a share, from $54.7 million, or 53 cents, a year earlier, Palm said in a statement on Thursday. Excluding costs for stock-based compensation and other items, the loss of 86 cents a share missed the average 57-cent estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

Sales in the period ended Feb. 28 fell 71 percent, to $90.6 million, from $312 million.

Palm is preparing to release its new Pre smartphone in June and hopes the model will revive plummeting sales by winning over fans of the Apple iPhone and BlackBerry, made by Research in Motion.

Palm has reported losses in the last seven quarters. The company, which introduced the pioneering Pilot device more than a decade ago, said on March 3 that sales declined because of dwindling orders for its older models. fuente: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/20/technology/companies/20palm.html?_r=1&ref=technology

SpiralFrog owes $34 million. Investors get nothing?

by Greg Sandoval

Attorneys representing defunct music service SpiralFrog have notified investors not to expect any returns. Whatever money comes from liquidating assets will go to a group that loaned the company an "amount exceeding $34 million."

In a letter dated March 17, 2009, the law firm Rattet, Pasternak & Gordon-Oliver delivered that message to an undisclosed number of SpiralFrog investors. A copy of the letter, seen by CNET News, says that the group that loaned the money was issued senior secured notes, which gives members of the group priority in any funds generated from the sale of assets.

"In that SpiralFrog's creditors will not be paid in full, there will be no distribution to shareholders," the law firm wrote.

The sum of money only includes the loans the company took to continue funding operations and doesn't include the amount that investors put in. Just where all this money went could shed light on some of the travails faced by ad-supported music services. A source close to the company told CNET on Friday that customers will see their music become inaccessible in two months.

New York-based SpiralFrog ceased operations in recent days and is one of the best-known digital music service to fail. The ad-supported service was wracked with problems even before launching in September 2007.


fuente: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10201735-93.html?tag=newsEditorsPicksArea.0

Did Apple OK price cut on latest MacBook Air?

No, this isn't a price cut reflected on the Apple Web site. And it's not much. But if you're in the market for a high-end MacBook, every dollar counts. Besides, Apple will probably match the lower price.

At major resellers like Newegg, PC Connection (i.e., Mac Connection), and Buy.com the latest version of the high-end MacBook Air (1.86GHz, 128GB solid-state drive) is now selling for--hold your breath--$2,399 instead of the listed $2,499 on the Apple Web site. Not much. What is best described as a price snip rather than a price cut.

Listing for Apple MacBook Air (1.86GHz, 128GB SSD) on newegg.com(Credit: newegg.com)
But my question is, did Apple green-light this? Or is this simply resellers adjusting their pricing to market realities. (I would imagine that luxury laptops like the MacBook Air are not jumping off the shelves at resellers these days, considering the state of the economy.)
Whether Apple green-lighted it or not may be immaterial, however, because (some? most? all?) Apple stores have a policy that stipulates: if you find an Apple computer priced lower at a major reseller (like Mac Connection), they will price-match it up to 10 percent of the listed Apple price. (This is the policy at the Apple Store that I frequent.)
Maybe there's a trend here. Maybe Apple will even make an official price move. Makes sense, right? The economy is in a tailspin and consumers have less disposable income, so Apple caves and officially cuts prices before the scheduled introduction of new MBA models. But then again, this is Apple. It doesn't have to stoop to unscheduled price cuts--so much for that fond hope.

FUENTE: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-10191203-64.html