Ben Schachter, Internet Analyst at UBS Investment Research in a note to his clients outlined the prospects for Yahoo and Google in the coming year. The divergent fortunes of two web giants are aptly reflected in their hiring (and firing) forecasts.
- We believe there is a good chance of headcount reductions for Yahoo in 2007, or at least slowed hiring.
- While Google has more than doubled its headcount in the last year, we still expect very significant hiring in 2007. The company currently has almost 1,300 openings on its website for the U.S. alone.
Looks like Google is planning on making (and spending) a lot of money in 2007, though these kind of hiring numbers remind of another fast growing company….
Amazing how fast fortunes can change in today’s world. Just a few years ago, eBay, for example, was untouchable. Now the only buzz you hear about the auction site is of the disarray kind.
Makes me wonder if Google will still be “Google” even 5 years from now, let alone the YouTubes and MySpaces of the Web.
that same analyst fails to note that 2007 is the first serious vesting cycle for many early google employees…i anticipate several senior level departures at the marzipan layer across all core functions…as for yahoo, there’s already a brain drain and that reorg only makes things worse BUT they appear to have a more serious interest in actionable r&d than even elgoog…my bet is on yahoo for retention of top level talent, while goog loses top talent to myriad startups and early retirement…
One word for Google… Powerset.
I don’t get it, why is Google hiring even more people? It doesn’t know what to do with the people that it already has. And it certainly doesn’t know how to manage the 50-80+ new people that they hire every single week.
I agree with dave…given how much money earlier Googlers are about to make, we’re going to see more and more leave for startups because of the internal disarray becoming more obvious with every new hire.
hmm… Could it be that Yahoo is focussed more on web 2.0 Aquisitions – while Google is focussed on CREATING and Developing Labs projects – that accounts for their differences in hiring.
Yahoo is still higher on PageViews than Google according to the top web traffic tracking companies – so, they are still getting substantial traffic