Yes, Google has laid off employees before. But those were DoubleClick employees. America's CTO, Eric Schmidt, managed to cull any deadwood from Google's Mountain View campus without it becoming a hot story. This time it's different, writes one of my leakers, and all the smart people can smell it. Here's the algorithm:

Googlers have slowly been realizing that their job isn't an entitlement. GOOG could lay off 10 percent of its work force and see no difference in revenue. I am guessing that the engineers aren't panicking at all, because engineers walk on water at the G. Who is freaking out? Contractors. If that contract doesn't get renewed, hit the bricks, pal. See, contractors at Google are like Mexican immigrants in Southern California. They do the jobs that nobody else wants to do and are treated like a lower class of human. Maybe engineers are worried then that they will have to do some of the bullshit, why-did-i-get-a-PhD-for-this work that the contractors are doing