Even Google Inc, the No. 1 search engine in the United States, suffering its share of blows from the ongoing recession – in its third staff reduction this year, the company has announced its plans to cut its sales and marketing team by roughly 200 employees! In January, Google slashed nearly 100 recruiters and, in February, it announced laying-off almost 40 people.

Though the Mountain View, California-based Google has refrained from disclosing how many of its total 21,000 employees work in sales and marketing division, it has cited over-investment in certain parts of the company as the reason behind the recently-announced layoffs.

In a blog posting on Thursday, Google Senior VP of Global Sales and Business Development Omid Kordestani said: “When companies grow that quickly it’s almost impossible to get everything right and we certainly didn’t. In addition, we over-invested in some areas in preparation for the growth trends we were experiencing at the time.”

Commenting on the proposed layoffs, analyst Sameet Sinha, of JMP Securities, said the cuts fell in line with the schema of Google’s Chief Financial Officer Patrick Pichette, who took office last year and for whom cost-cutting is the company’s foremost concern.