Breaking News: Google Not Canceling Dinner

Sam Gustin says: Hungry Googlers can rest -- and eat -- easy.

Contrary to a report on Valleywag, tech giant Google is not ditching the free dinner it provides to employees.

CNBC's Jim Goldman reported this afternoon that the rumor is false, and Google says its has no idea how it started.

Valleywag, for its part -- and 45,000 page views later -- is now saying that the culinary cutbacks "are more targeted than we'd first heard," and only apply to "non-technical" employees.

One commenter on the gossip blog -- "syntheticzero" seems to know what they're talking about:

"This story is not true. Apparently dinner was canceled at one building on the Mountain View campus for reasons unknown, perhaps for cost-cutting, who knows, but not across all buildings and certainly not Google-wide. And the food is not an added "perk" --- it's an alternate form of compensation. Googlers get paid a bit less than other companies (I took a salary cut when coming to Google, like most people), but it's made up in "perks" such as food --- which helps me and everyone else be more productive, saves time, etc. I really doubt Google is going to radically cut back on "perks" because if they do, they'd better raise my salary to compensate! But really, Google management is too smart to do something like cut back in a significant way on perks.". □