Google cuts sales staff across New Zealand and Australia

The search giant is cutting 200 sales and marketing jobs worldwide, including 15 in Australasia.

Google has confirmed that speculation in The Australian Financial Review this morning is correct.

Fifteen of the company’s 350 staff across Australia and New Zealand will lose their jobs.

Google’s office in Melbourne will be closed, and the number of staff in New Zealand (currently believed to be around eight) will be cut.

Recently, Google’s New Zealand country manager Rachael Cotton-Bronte resigned, and was not replaced.

Google says that although staff are being trimmed, "a team will remain in Auckland".

The vast majority of Google’s staff are located in the company’s ANZ headquarters in Sydney, which as well as sales and marketing handles worldwide development for Google Maps and Google Street View.

The 200 redundancies represent 1% of Google’s global workforce of around 20,000.

Google says that overlapping positions had developed in its business over time.