Google hired 2,130 employees last quarter

CNET takes a closer look at Google's financial results and wonders why the firm hired so many people. Google now employs almost 16,000 people and added 2,130 workers to its force last quarter. That's about 35 new people showing up everyday for their first day of work at Google's offices all over the world. The site believes the massive hiring might have something to do with the Google phone project:

Those numbers may seem surprising given the fact that Google attributed last quarter's 3-cent earnings miss to overspending on hiring, and promised to curb that impulse. However, during the conference call with analysts Thursday afternoon, Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said many of the people hired during the quarter had been given offers before the previous quarter had closed.

The fast pace of hiring at the search giant is the one concern Jordan Rohan, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets, mentioned in an interview with CNET News.com after the Google earnings call.

"Half the company has been hired in the last 12 months. That's chaotic," he says. "The new employees find it difficult to figure out how to get things done. It's not a normal company."

I can only guess that the new hires are working on the much-anticipated "Google phone," which is probably going to be a Google operating system for mobile devices, and on the new copyright content filtering technology deployed at YouTube this week. They're also probably tasked with taking over the advertising world with the company's lucrative online automated ad platform.

More info over here.