The economic news is bad enough, but now we're seeing outright fear mongering. Yesterday, WebGuild reported that Google was laying off 10,000 - and the headline was a bit misleading, as the post itself spoke of contractors being gotten rid of. Today, CNet has followed up and found out that this is nothing new, and represents Google trying to straighten out the way they manage contractors - this is from an October San Jose Mercury News piece:

In that article, Google co-founder Sergey Brin revealed the 10,000 number and said, "It's really high." According to the story, "He said Google began looking at the number six months ago and has a plan to significantly reduce that number through vendor management, converting some contractors to regular employees, and other approaches."

So it's a lot less scary than it was made to sound yesterday. I saw that pop up in my newsreader yesterday afternoon, but I decided to sit on it. Guess I'm glad I did :)

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