About 100 staff will go in the US, but Google would not reveal how many staff would go from its UK or EMEA sales and marketing operation, which numbers about 1500.
Omid Kordestani, senior vice-president, global sales and business development at Google, said that after a period of rapid growth, "it's almost impossible to get everything right - and we certainly didn't".
He conceded that in some parts of the business Google had "created overlapping organizations which not only duplicate effort, but also complicate the decision-making process". He added: "We over invested in some areas in preparation for the growth trends we were experiencing at the time".
Kordestani said Google had considered several options to address these shortcomings, but "ultimately concluded that we had to restructure our organisations in order to improve our effectiveness and efficiency as a business".
Globally, Google has not been forced to lay off as many staff as some of its rivals. Last December, Yahoo started laying off about 1,500 staff as part of its $400m cost-cutting plan announced in October. Meanwhile, Time Warner-owned AOL announced in January that it is to cut 700 jobs, 10% of its global workforce, in an attempt to offset the advertising downturn.
Earlier this month, Google promoted Matt Brittin, its UK client sales chief, to run its UK operations. He replaces Dennis Woodside, who has become Google's head of ad sales for the Americas.
Woodside is replacing Tim Armstrong, who is joining AOL as its new global chief executive. The role of Mark Howe, who runs Google's UK agency sales operation, remains
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