AOL will be getting rid of staff in the German offices in Hamburg, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt and Munich and firing up to 140 people. They all plan to sack everyone in the Spanish and Swedish offices.

Total losses = 1400

Nearly 300,000 global back-office IT jobs will have been lost in 2009 by the end of the year. The Hackett Group analysed 4000 global companies in North America and Europe with over $1bn in revenue. It found that jobs were cut in all back-office industries – HR, finance and procurement – but IT suffered most.

Total losses = 300,000

Source: CEO Randy Adams on Techcrunch;

We haven’t closed the financing. We knew when we started the company that to compete with the likes of Microsoft, Google and Yahoo, it was going to take at least $100 million, half to build the back end across thousands of servers and half to get distribution (maybe more with Microsoft spending $100 million on Bing advertising alone).

What we didn’t plan on was the terrible downturn in the economy which made it impossible to raise another $50 million to get distribution (mainly through toolbar deals). In this economy nobody wants to invest that kind of money in a company that is pre-revenue, even if the net result is potentially a multi-billion dollar company.

Cruvic: I was very sad to see this wonderful search engine up for sale and even worse offline. I used it a lot on my mobile and it was extremely useful. I do hope they find the money in the future or a suitable solution. Unfortunately their loss is someone elses gain and no doubt a company that has lots of cash to burn will take this idea and make it even better.

Related Posts: Google Fast Flip

Wikipedia: searchme

Machester Tank closes plant, 66 jobs lost
Fort Wayne Foundry Corp cuts 461 jobs
Harsco Corp cuts 90 jobs

Nearly 100 Turner Industries contract maintenance workers were laid off from the Georgia Gulf plant in Plaquemine
Lockheed Martin layoffs 100 employees
10000 jobs under threat at Royal Dutch Shell
Multiserv layoffs 90 employees
Volvo USA cuts 135 jobs

Southco Inc. laid off 200 employees throughout its global network Wednesday, including 69 at its Delaware County headquarters. The general economic conditions were the cause of these reductions.

Penske Logistis layoffs 53 truck drivers
Nestor Traffic Systems goes into receivership, more than 100 jobs at stake
ABB cuts 25 jobs at Jefferson City plant
Trane Inc will layoff 320 at Pueblo plant by August
Barlow Lyde & Gilbert layoffs 49 in England
McDermott layoffs 25 lawyers and 47 staff
Satyam may layoff only 5000
Philips Products closes Stayton plant, 125 jobs lost
Call centre operator MCCI layoffs 450
University of Colorado cuts 75 jobs
Paragon Industries cuts 105 jobs
Tree of Life layoffs 39 jobs
Hardigg Industries cuts 50 jobs
AGCo cuts 60 jobs
Rheem Manufacturing cuts 470 employees

Aegon USA a subsidiary of Netherlands-based insurer Aegon N.V., will cut 138 positions from its Louisville offices at Aegon Tower.

Emerson lays off 176 in Minnesota
Capital Group cuts 820 jobs
Principal Financial Group cuts 220 jobs
Ken-American Resources layoffs 75 employees
Fidelity Investments layoffs 45 in Merrimack
Dorsey & Whitney cuts 55 jobs
Harris Corp layoffs 100 mechanical engineers

Waukesha Engine cuts 113 jobs. The layoffs, plus the 84 layoffs and 17 early retirements in February, account for 40 percent of the plant’s union members. The company blames the Economic Downturn has affected their product so they are trying to align their work force.

Wausau Paper closes Appleton facility, 100 jobs lost
John Deere layoffs 494 workers at Iowa plant
Nanogen layoffs 89 employees
Suzuki & Mitsubishi car delarships to close in Hernando County, 80 jobs lost
Autodesk Inc to cut 430 jobs in latest round of layoffs
Metlife layoffs around 250
Greenwich Hospital layoffs 77 employees

HP is to layoff  6400 workers, or 2 percent of HP’s global staff of 321000.  HP, whose products include PCs, printers, computer servers, ink and toner cartridges, didn’t provide more detail on those cuts.

The layoffs come on top of the 24600 jobs HP was already dumping as part of its acquisition of Electronic Data Systems.

Job losses = 6400

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Ten percent of AOL’s staff will be cut in the coming weeks. AOL join a whole bunch of companies who have recently shed jobs because of the GEDT.  AOL Chief Executive Randy Falco told employees in a memo Wednesday that AOL plans to cut the jobs in the next several quarters, and that the company hopes to have any U.S.-based cuts completed by the end of March. He also said that AOL will skip merit pay raises in 2009.

Total losses = 700

The IT sector around the world is being hammered by job losses because of the current economic down turn (CEDT).

Just today Microsoft sacked 1400 people, and a further 3600 will go in the coming months. There are fears that up to 60000 jobs will go at the Intel facility in the Philippines. Intel are the biggest computer chip makers. Their competition AMD has already shed 1100 jobs a couple of days ago. Texas Instruments have already started laying off 400 jobs from its semiconductor factory in the northern resort town of Baguio due to the global financial crisis (GFC).

Sun Microsystems Inc. have already laid off 6000 people.  Santa Clara, which this week unveiled plans to reduce its global workforce by about 12% or 1800 workers.  National Semiconductor Corp., said it is cutting 330 jobs.

One of the largest cuts announced last year September after the merger of Hewlett-Packard Co. and Electronic Data Systems Corp. Hewlett-Packard Co. said that it planned to cut as many as 25,000 employees as a result of the merger.

Lenovo started 2009 by announcing plans to cut 2500 jobs or 11% of its workforce. In Tokyo, electronics and entertainment giant Sony Corp. said that it would offer early retirement to employees in its TV division and would eliminate jobs at its movies, music and games units. The company, which is facing its first yearly loss in 14 years, also said it would cut 1000 temporary workers in Japan when it shut down a TV plant.

Autodesk Inc. cut 750 jobs, while Advanced Micro Devices Inc. eliminated 1100 positions – on top of 2200 announced layoffs last year.

So even Microsoft the biggest player in the IT world is letting go 5000 brilliant people because of the global economic down turn.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said in a statement today,

While we are not immune to the effects of the economy, I am confident in the strength of our product portfolio and soundness of our approach. We’re certainly in the midst of a once-in-a-lifetime set of economic conditions. The economy is resetting to a lower level of business and consumer spending. The reductions will be in the areas of research and development, marketing, sales, finance, legal, human resources and information technology, and about 1,400 of those cuts will occur today.

Well, why on earth did you hire those 5000 geniuses in the first place Mr Ballmer?

Job losses: 1400 (3600 over 18 months).

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