AOL and SUN go into layoffs
Sun will be laying off some 1500 workers worldwide, and AOL will be laying off some 2000 workers in news reported today.
Sun has been desperately trying to get to be the Dot in Web 2.0 like they were the dot in dot com. But have so far been unable to really work well in a world of commodity hardware. The 1500 people laid off will represent 4.33% of its total work force.
AOL has also indicated that they are going to lay off 20% of their employees in the near future, as it too tries to find relevancy in an internet world that has really moved on from the closed walls that is the AOL internet system. 750 of those layoffs will come from their HQ in Northern Virginia.
Both companies have had a difficult time since everyone else moved on to the world of commodity hardware and the open internet. Both have set aside money to try to rein in costs while they try to find a new model that will work well with where the companies want to go. But for these two bastions of Web 1.0 it will be increasingly difficult to appeal to GenY and GenX. Kids grew up with the internet, not with AOL. Kids grew up with commodity hardware and gadgets, not Sun servers.
In the mean time, the dead pool of companies is looking like it is just going to grow larger. Additional reporting can be found here at the Times Online.
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