Kara Swisher

Recent Posts by Kara Swisher

Even More Layoffs at AOL: India Unit Cuts Staff by 400, Transitions 300 More to Contractors

Along with several hundred layoffs taking place in the U.S. tomorrow, which BoomTown reported earlier, AOL is also drastically cutting staff at its Indian unit right now, sources said.

According to sources, AOL India will lay off 400 employees in Bangalore, as well as transition 300 more to contractors working for partners.

That leaves about 200 staffers there, who will work on consumer-facing products for the Indian and Asian markets.

The New York-based Internet giant is also laying off several hundred people starting tomorrow in very targeted areas of the company’s U.S. operations, in a move that its CEO Tim Armstrong signaled last week was coming.

Sources said there will be no employees let go in its network group or advertising sales unit, but editorial and other media product groups will be impacted.

Despite the pain for AOL employees, the long-rumored layoffs are much smaller in number than the last one AOL did, in which 2,300 people lost their jobs. Before the layoffs this week, the company had a little more than 5,000 employees now.

The drastic cost-cutting comes right after the purchase of the Huffington Post, which AOL bought for $315 million. The acquisition of the news and opinion site closed on Monday.

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I think the NSA has a job to do and we need the NSA. But as (physicist) Robert Oppenheimer said, “When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and argue about what to do about it only after you’ve had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.”

— Phil Zimmerman, PGP inventor and Silent Circle co-founder, in an interview with Om Malik