We all know that Google started out as an ad company. Well they still very much are an ad company. In fact, in their Q2 2013 earnings call yesterday, they said that nearly 93% of it’s revenue came from those ads that we all hate. However, none of this is really news to us. Google did bury something at the bottom of their press release yesterday though, and it had to do with the number of employees.
“On a worldwide basis, we employed 44,777 full-time employees (40,178 in Google and 4,599 in Motorola Mobile) as of June 30, 2013, compared to 53,891 full-time employees (38,739 in Google, 9,982 Motorola Mobile, and 5,170 Motorola Home) as of March 31, 2013.”
That’s a pretty big jump, nearly 10 thousand workers disappeared. Of course, we all know Motorola Home was sold off. So that got rid of the 5,170 employees there. But Google had fired about 5,383 Motorola Mobility employees. That’s more than half of Motorola’s workforce. So that tells you right there that’s a lot of people. And to get rid of that many people in the span of 3 months without it hitting the press or media at all is quite surprising.
Google itself did gain about 1,439 employees in the three-month period. So some could have come from Motorola’s mobile division, but then we also don’t have proof so we’ll just leave that as speculation.
It appears that Google is still doing some restructuring with Motorola. Which is definitely needed. But they also need to start making some money. Yes, they did bring in $998 million in revenue for the quarter but they still lost quite a bit. Right now, Motorola is just another project for Google that they are losing money on and their ad service is keeping them alive. Wonder where the $500 million for marketing the Moto X came from? Probably those pesky ads that we all hate.
How many of you are surprised by the number of employees Motorola lost over this three-month period? Let us know in the comments below.