Google unveiled its Q4 2012 earnings, and among the numbers were its customary look at employee headcounts for the quarter, and that number tells the tale of a continued reorganization of the Motorola business it acquired last year. Overall Google’s full-time headcount went up, with 53,861 staff overall vs. 53,546 globally in Q3 2012, but the gains were all on the Google side, which added 1,426 employees, while Motorola dropped 1,111 employees from last quarter.
Some of those lost from Motorola’s workforce may have been integrated into the Google headcount gains, but it’s clear that Google is still streamlining the mobile hardware business. And in another development, Google now counts Motorola as two distinct business units: one called “Motorola Mobile” one called “Motorola Home,” whereas before they were only ever identified as just Motorola.
Motorola Home is the business unit that Google has sold to Arris, in a deal which is still pending. That means the 5,204 employees listed as being housed under that business unit will likely be gone by the next time quarterly results roll around, which is likely a head count reduction over and above the 4,000 pink slips that it was said to be handing out gradually to Motorola employees as part of the corporate reorganization of the company post-acquisition.
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