Google layoffs above 5,000 temporary employees

Google Inc has jettisoned a substantial number of temporary workers in a recent austerity drive spurred by the recession. Though
the Internet search leader still intends to spend billions of dollars during the next two years on product research, development and acquisitions.

The spending plans were outlined in a regulatory filing that also provided some clues about the magnitude of a recent payroll purge targeting Google’s legion of contractors and other workers who aren’t considered full-time or part-time employees.

The filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission was submitted on December 15, but it was made on paper, leaving it unavailable through the various Web services that track reports to the agency. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the records this week.

A key section of the filing is being kept confidential because Google maintains it contains trade secrets, but the publicly accessible parts provide some information that hadn’t previously been disclosed.

For instance, Google revealed it has 24,400 employees, including 4,300 interns, temporary workers and contractors. That contrasts sharply with the roughly 10,000 contractors that Google co-founder Sergey Brin said the company had in October. “It’s really high,” Brin said in an October 16 interview with the San Jose Mercury News.

Google acknowledged in late November that it planned to significantly reduce the number of its contractors and retain all of its full-time employees.

Although the company’s revenue is still rising, Google’s growth has been decelerating. The recession has caused consumers to shop less frequently on the Internet and advertisers have trimmed their marketing budgets. Those factors have slowed the money flowing to Google because online ads generate virtually all the company’s revenue, which is expected to total about $20 billion in 2008.

Source: Press Trust of India

Get a free domain for your blog

It’s good to blog after a long period of time. I temporarily stopped blogging due to examination tension. Now, all that cracks are over. Now, I am going to tell you a really useful news. I came across a website named www.co.cc. They are providing free domain name as www.yourname.co.cc. Generally we need to buy a domain like .com, .in, .org etc. But this website is providing us with 2 domain names with advanced features like DNS Setttings etc. All of these are free of charge. I have also got my free domain name. It’s really cool.

Already, there is a website called www.freedomain.co.nr, which offers free domain name. But, it doesn’t provide it free for blogging sites and group sites like Yahoo Groups and Google Groups. I tried many times to get a free domain for my blog. But, my registration was not accepted. So, I am very much disappointed. Now, I am happy with my co.cc domain. They give 2 domains for free users. If we donate for them, they provided us 100 domains for free. So, I think that this service is very useful.

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India tops Asia in Spammers

Spam is the practice of sending unwanted e-mail messages, frequently with commercial content, in large quantities to an indiscriminate set of recipients.

Trend Micro, a firm focussing the security of digital information exchange through Internet, undertook a  survey on the number of spammers in each country. The result was released earlier this week. In Asia, India has the largest number of spammers, overshadowing countries like China and Japan. India is ranked seventh largest pool of spammers in the world. India contributes for nearly 4 percent of the total spammers in the world. Russia leads globally, contributing about 11 percent of total spammers. America contributes about 9.68 percent and was second. The BRIC Countries ( Brazil, Russia, India, China) together contributes about 20 percent of the global spammers.

Asia contributes about 16.57 percent of the total world spammers. The top ten countries contribute about 57 percent of the total spammers. The survey said that there will be a steady growth in number of spammers across the world, until there is a proper internet infrastructure. Most of the spams were based on get-rich-quick mails. So, be aware of spammers. Don’t believe all that have been sent to your inbox.

Study says that Computer Games are beneficial!

A national study in the US has concluded that computer games foster social interaction and civic engagement and that there was no evidence that they incited users to violence.

The study released on Wednesday by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that nearly all teens play video games and that their games’ activity has become a major component of their overall social experience.

“This report does a lot of myth-busting,” said Amanda Lenhart, the Pew senior researcher who authored the study. “It’s not just about 14-year-old boys sitting alone in the basement blowing things up.”

The most surprising finding of the study was how all-encompassing video games are today, Lenhart said.

“We don’t see economic inequalities, we don’t see racial differences,” she said. “We see are some slight variations by gender and by age, but that’s about it.”

The report said it was “the first large-scale study to examine the relationship between specific gaming experiences and civic outcomes.”

“For most teens, gaming is a social activity and a major component of their overall social experience. 65 per cent of game-playing teens play with other people who are in the room with them,” according to the study.

The study said 99 per cent of boys and 94 per cent of girls played video games, while 90 per cent of parents said they played video games with their children. The figures were no doubt boosted by the incredible success of Nintendo’s Wi video game console, and also by the spread of casual online gaming, in which users can play quick and simple games online.

The study noted that the most popular game played by US teens was Guitar Hero, in which users play a plastic guitar device by hitting correct note sequences of songs. The other most popular games were Halo 3, Madden NFL, Solitaire, and Dance Dance Revolution.

The Pew report is based on a telephone survey of 1,102 teenagers in the ages of 12 to 17 between November 1 and February 5. The margin of error is plus or minus three percentage points.

Google Chrome is a hit!

World’s largest Web Services company ‘Google’ has recently launched its new and first browser – “Google Chrome”. It was released for download on 3rd September, 2008. It has now become so popular among the surfers. I’ve downloaded that day itself and gave it a try! It’s different. I was mainly developed by three persons at Google US. One among them is an Indian Software Engineer.

Google Chrome is very compact as Firefox. The downloader size is only near 480 KB. The setup downloads and installs Chrome which is nearly 7 MB.  It’s not like other browsers. It’s something different. Instead of using the traditional menu bar and navigating toolbar they’ve tried something different. It will not display that same old type of Home Page at start. It displays the thumbnails of frequently viewed websites. The tabbed browsing is almost same as Firefox other than the appearance. The present version is only a beta version. Engineers are still working on it.

The most important aspect is that it is a opensource software. Though Microsoft has released it’s new beta version of Internet Explorer 8 it’s not as great as Firefox. Firefox 3 is the best and stable than IE 8. As Google has released it as opensource, it is believed that it could be a major competetion for Firefox in days to come.

For more info on Chrome: Click Here