San Francisco - Even mighty Google is feeling the effects of the global recession. The advertising and software giant is cutting 100 recruiting jobs and plans to shutter three engineering offices in Norway, Sweden and Texas, the company announced.

Laszlo Bock, Google's vice president of people operations, said in a blog post late Wednesday that since Google is now hiring at a reduced rate it needs fewer people to hire people.

The company had a huge number of recruiters working as it scaled up from a two person operation to a workforce of over 25,000 in just a decade.

Google's announcement came amid deepening concerns in the tech sector about the effects of the economic slump. It coincided with a decision by Motorola to ace more than 4,000 jobs after sales of its mobile phones plummeted more than 50 per cent over the holiday season. The company sold just 19 million phones in the fourth quarter, down from 25.4 million in the third quarter and 40.9 million in the fourth quarter of 2007.

The cuts represent about 6 per cent of the company's global workforce and came after Motorola axed 6,800 jobs last year and a total of 16,000 since the start of 2007. Some 75 per cent of the latest cuts will come from the company's cell phone unit and will account for some 700 million dollars in annual savings.

Microsoft is also considering a round of job cuts, according to the Wall Street Journal. The paper said that the software giant could announce a significant number of firings as early as next week. Microsoft currently employs 91,000 people worldwide. The report said that the plans for the cutbacks have not yet been firmed up and Microsoft could end up finding alternative methods to control costs. (dpa)