ColemanMedia Report

Despite reporting better than expected search revenue figures and a rosy outlook on the future of online advertising, Google announced last week that it will be laying off up to 2,500 search engine spiders by the end of its fiscal quarter, ending in January.  According to officials at Google, the move is intended to help the media giant trim expenses and slow down the speed of search results.  ”For a long time we’ve been focused on constantly improving how people find or experience information on the Internet,” said Google co-founder and president Sergey Brin.  ”It’s time we focused on making more money.  You think Microsoft makes money by making things better?  C’mon.  They make money by force-feeding mediocre products to consumers using the leanest operation possible.  Cutting some spiders will help us do just that.”  Officials with Google report that they will first solicit volunteer spiders willing to retire early with generous severance packages, then forcefully lay off the rest.

In preparation for their imminent departure with Time Warner, long-standing portal and flailing content aggregator AOL announced early Tuesday that it will be cutting the “A” from its name to allow it to focus more on it’s core business of slowly fading into online oblivion.  The move, which will go along with layoffs and a major shakeup of leadership, will reportedly save the company more than $30 million this quarter, making it a much more attractive acquisition target for another hapless media conglomerate.  ”We knew we had to cut, and we had to cut deep,” said CEO Tim Armstrong.  ”And the choice to cut the ‘A’ was the most obvious.  I mean, most of America doesn’t use us anymore, and 90% of Americans under 18 don’t even know who we are, so it was kind of a no-brainer.  Now we can focus solely on the online portion of our business, which we define as operating dying properties or services that Google or someone else has already effectively replaced.”