It’s hard enough to go up against the like of Google when the economy is humming along. Add in the fact that Google is so far in the lead in search it may just be downright discouraging to potential competitors due to the mountain they need to climb to compete. Giving a nod to the economy, it was announced today that Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia fame was shutting the effort down for now.

Designed to be a search engine of the people the Wikia Search service was developed with the idea of allowing users to determine the rankings of sites and pages for all other users. As reported at cnet, Wales was prepared to look at this as a long term project but usability for the public was one or two years away from reality. Considering the state of the economy it was decided to put the project to rest but Wales said that he would return to it when the economy got better.

Last week’s news of Google letting 200 sales and marketing employees go certainly raised eyebrows. Many are wondering whether the search giant is getting leaner and meaner or if they are being dinged by the current state of the economy. If the 360 jobs listed on their website are any indication one has to think that their main reason for the actions of last week were to, like they said, eliminate redundancy and unnecessary layers. Having that many jobs posted certainly is encouraging for those that fit the profiles of these openings.

Of the jobs offered only 30 or so are in the sales and marketing area. There appears to be a rather international flair to the openings as well. If you are looking for that account management position in Cairo that you always wanted this may be your chance. Sales not your thing? How about an engineering position in Krakow?

Google continues to make itself leaner and meaner as we trudge through this economic mess. In only the second large layoff in its history (the first coming back in January of this year when they let 100 recruiters go) the target this time is sales and marketing.

As reported by ClickZ about 200 Googlers from these areas will be let go. Most of this is coming from internal auditing that has shown some significant redundancy in positions and functions. SVP of Global Sales and Business Development Omid Kordestani wrote in a blog post today

“In some areas we’ve created overlapping organizations which not only duplicate effort but also complicate the decision-making process,” Kordestani said. “That makes our teams less effective and efficient than they should be. In addition, we over-invested in some areas in preparation for the growth trends we were experiencing at the time.”