Global internet giant Google has announced a further 200 job losses, with the cuts to be focused on its sales and marketing operations and half coming from its North American operations.

Google has already announced 140 job losses so far this year in addition to the 300 jobs lost a year ago. The New York Times states that the global recession is hitting parts of the business harder than the internet firm had anticipated. Prior to the cuts Google had employed over 20,000 people.

“Google has grown very quickly in a very short period of time,” senior VP of global sales and business development Omid Kordestani stated. “When companies grow that quickly it's almost impossible to get everything right—and we certainly didn't.

“In some areas we've created overlapping organisations which not only duplicate effort but also complicate the decision-making process. That makes our teams less effective and efficient than they should be. In addition, we over-invested in some areas in preparation for the growth trends we were experiencing at the time.

“We have informed Googlers that we plan to reduce the number of roles within our sales and marketing organizations by just under 200 globally. Making changes of this kind is never easy—and we recognize that the recession makes the timing even more difficult for the Googlers concerned. We did look at a number of different options but ultimately concluded that we had to restructure our organizations in order to improve our effectiveness and efficiency as a business.”

The firm added that it will give those losing their jobs the chance to apply for roles elsewhere at the company.