Google lays off 100 recruiters

In today's podcast: Google lays off 100 recruiters and closes unprofitable services; Motorola lays off 4,000; and Steve Jobs to take sick leave.

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Google is planning to lay off 100 recruiters, and is closing down engineering offices in Texas, Norway, and Sweden. The company says its still hiring, but at a reduced rate, and so needs fewer people to do the hiring. It has already cut contracts with external recruitment agencies and contractors. Google also plans to move 70 engineering staff to new locations as it closes offices in Trondheim in Norway, Lulea in Sweden and Austin in Texas. Those closures are because it is inefficient to have teams dispersed over so many remote offices, the company said.

Google also announced it will either shut down or stop supporting several free Web-based services, including Google Video, which it launched before acquiring YouTube, and Jaiku, a microblogging platform similar to the better-known Twitter. Instead, it will release code allowing people to build their own Jaiku-type services on its App Engine platform for Web services. Other services for the chop include its a AJAX development framework, Mashup Editor, a mobile social networking site called Dodgeball, and Google Notebook information sharing service.

Motorola plans to lay off another 4,000 employees, mostly from its Mobile Device business, on top of the 3,000 layoffs it announced last quarter. The move will save Motorola an extra 700 million dollars this year, it said. The company also said it expects to report revenue of between 7 billion and 7.2 billion dollars for the fourth quarter -- a disappointment for analysts who had expected nearer 7.5 billion dollars

Steve Jobs has said his health issues are more complex than he originally thought. He told Apple employees yesterday that he will take a leave of absence until the end of June. His announcement comes a little over a week after he revealed that his weight loss over the past year has been caused by a hormone imbalance. Jobs will hand over control of day-to-day operations to Tim Cook, Apple's chief operating officer. However, Jobs will remain CEO will stay involved in major strategic decisions

Nortel Networks filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the U.S. on Wednesday, and is also seeking protection from its creditors in Canada and Europe. Although the company considered other alternatives, it considers bankruptcy in the company's best interest in the current economic downturn, and hopes to emerge from the process more focused, financially sound and competitive. Nortel had a 107 million dollar bond payment due today.

And those are the top stories from the IDG Global IT News Update, brought to you by the IDG News Service. I'm Peter Sayer in Paris. Join us again later for more news from the world of technology.