The latest IT Contractor News from Contract Eye

The Associated Press has got hold of papers which suggest that Google has been steadily dumping large chunks of its IT contractor workforce over the past few months, despite planning to spend billions on market research over the next few years.

Google's latest spending plans were submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in mid-December, and despite key parts of the plans remaining confidential, some of the publicly accessible parts suggest that the search giant has been steadily shedding contractors as part of a cost-cutting initiative. The company had already acknowledged its intention to reduce its contractor headcount in October.

According to the AP report, Google states that it has 24,400 employees, including 4,300 contractors, temps and interns. However, founder Sergey Brin claimed that the company had 10,000 contractors a few months ago, suggesting that several thousand contractors have been culled in the past few months.

Apparently, the web has been rife with speculation as to the size of the cull - figures of a few hundred contractors to many thousands have been suggested.

However, a Google spokeswoman told the Associated Press on January 7th that journalists "shouldn't conclude that the difference between the two figures represented how many people had been culled under the plans."