The WebGuild story about Google laying off ten thousand workers is (sadly) mostly made-up nonsense.
Probably the most outlandish statement in the article is "Since August, hundreds of employees have been laid off and there are reports that about 500 of them were recruiters."
Five hundred recruiters?? ROTFLMAO.
The only scintilla of truth in the entire article, as far as I can determine, is the bit about Google having approximately ten thousand contract workers, which Sergey Brin confirmed in an October 16 story in The Mercury News. The notion that Google will be letting all of them go is nonsense, however. Brin (in the same Mercury News story) did say Google "has a plan to significantly reduce that number through vendor management, converting some contractors to regular employees, and other approaches." That's all he said: "significantly reduce."
It's quite easy to verify that Google is, in fact, still hiring at a brisk pace. Go here to browse the 665 open positions.
