AOL is to shut down many of its European offices after failing to cut a third of its international workforce through voluntary redundancy. Although 1,100 of the company's staff have taken voluntary redundancy, a further 1,000 cuts are expected across the US and Europe.

The company announced plans late last year that it would be cutting 2,500 jobs worldwide as it attempted to save $300 million a year, but the Guardian reports that the shortfall on those taking up voluntary redundancy means more jobs will have to be cut.

Although AOL UK would not detail how many jobs would be cut, but it did say would be closing its offices in Spain and Sweden, as well as four German offices. AOL's operations in France have yet to decide whether they will be closing their Paris office.

Over the pond in the USA, the company said that it will "begin notifying a limited number of individuals impacted by the involuntary lay-off... with the majority of notifications taking place in the USA on 13 January." AOL added that "for many of the employees impacted in the USA Wednesday will be their last day in the office." The Seattle office, home of some of AOL's mobile operations, will also be closed and centralised in California.

A spokesman for AOL said, "We have looked at every aspect of this business. We evaluated our competitive position and product portfolio in every market, and we asked the hard questions about areas that were no longer core to the strategy and our profit profiles in the businesses and countries where we operate."

The spokesman also stressed that the offices of successful divisions, such as AdTech, would be unaffected by the restructuring.

Microsoft and HP both announced a joint deal today that will see the software and hardware giants collaborate on future engineering road maps to eliminate the complexities of IT management.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, HP chairman and CEO Mark Hurd, held a joint teleconference call this morning to announce the agreement. According to Ballmer the agreement, that spans both hardware, software and services, "will transform the way large enterprises deliver services to their customers, and help smaller organizations adopt IT to grow their businesses." Microsoft and HP believe a combined effort will offer a lower total cost of ownership for business customers.

Microsoft is using the tag line "simplify technology environments for businesses of all sizes" to describe the new deal. In short it appears Microsoft and HP will share ideas and technologies based on Microsoft's Cloud infrastructure and virtualization efforts. The deal isn't cheap and 250 million incremental dollars will be invested into the initiative. The two companies will also partner on some support solutions and marketing campaigns. During the joint teleconference call Ballmer stated "we're able to build on our incredible 25 year partnership of the two companies put together to drive things forward."

On the Official Google Docs Blog, Google has announced that over the next few weeks, they will be rolling out the ability for users to store all types of files in the cloud. Before this, you could only store Google Docs and PDFs (in addition to photos in Picasa). Now, you will be able to upload any file to the cloud, assuming it's less than 250MB. The advantage of such an offering is the ability to access those files from any PC with an Internet connection.

Google is giving 1GB of free storage for any files that are not converted into the Google Docs format. You can also purchase additional space for $0.25 a GB/year, making it a very compelling alternative to other cloud storage solutions. The space that you purchase will work across all Google Apps (including Picasa). People who currently use Google Docs seem like the ones who are most likely to take advantage of this new storage system. However, as it stands, it seems unlikely that it will be able compete with Microsoft's 25GB SkyDrive, or Dropbox's 2GB offerings.

Unfortunately, as much as the above sounds like the infamous GDrive that the world has been patiently awaiting, TechCrunch's Michael Arrington has written otherwise. "'This is not GDrive' said Google Docs product manager Vijay Bangaru yesterday while showing me something that sure does look exactly like the fabled GDrive. 'How is it different,' I asked. 'That's hard to say, because GDrive doesn't exist.'"

It's unclear what Google plans to accomplish with this new service. The only thing that makes sense is to say that this is some sort of test run for a future GDrive. Rest assured, there are sure to be third-party applications in the near future (such as Memeo Connect) that will allow users to interface with this new bit of cloud storage, and when they do become available, expect "GDrive," or whatever this thing is, to gain popularity.

The Zune HD is, as you'll know, Microsoft's answer to the iPod. As such, they put a fairly hefty amount of work into making it as impressive as can be; this, of course, includes firmware updates. The next Zune HD upgrade will bring XviD and Smart DJ support.

According to CNET, the update will be hitting sometime this Spring, and noted that whilst XviD support is in, DivX support is unlikely. On the bright side, the new format will support the HD AV dock accessory, though Microsoft wouldn't clarify the official resolutions supported. The other main feature is, of course, Smart DJ, currently only found in the Zune software for PC. When this feature debuts, it'll mean that if a user has a Zune Pass, and is on the same wireless network as the PC in question, then any Smart DJ playlists they create will include music streamed directly from the Zune Marketplace, as well as content already found on the device. A rather handy feature, to say the least.

As mentioned, the update will come sometime during Spring. Microsoft employees also reminded CNET that Facebook for the Zune HD will be arriving early this year, with the promised Twitter app already available on the device. If there are any other features due in the firmware update that are announced at a later date, you'll be able to read about them on Neowin.

Google has today revealed that in mid-December, they, along with a number of other large companies in the Internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors, were targeted in a sophisticated cyber-attack. This attack on their infrastructure originated in China, and resulted in the theft of intellectual property.

Google's analysis of this attack suggests that the aim was to access Gmail accounts of a number of Chinese human rights activists, but they believe the attempt failed. Only two accounts were successfully accessed, and the only information viewed included the creation date of the accounts, and subject lines, not the contents, of messages.

As part of the investigation, Google has uncovered that dozens of US, European and Chinese human rights advocates have also had their accounts accessed routinely by third parties. These accounts appear to have been accessed through phishing scams, rather than a security breach at Google themselves. As always, up to date anti-virus and anti-malware software is the best solution to protect against this.

Google has already used information from this attack to make security enhancements to their infrastructure to better protect users in the future, and have taken the unusual step of sharing this information both due to the security and human rights aspects, but also as part of a wider debate on China and free speech.

Due to this attack, and the background behind it, Google is now taking a second look at their operations in China, particularly Google.cn, where they currently offer censored search results as part of an agreement with China's government. Google is now taking a big step by informing the government of China that it is no longer willing to provide censored results, and will be entering into discussions regarding how it can do this without breaking Chinese law. Should Google find themselves unable to reach an agreement, they may shut down Google.cn, and close their offices in China.

This move has been driven by key executives at Google in the United States, who have been monitoring the human rights and freedom of speech situation in China carefully since they launched Google.cn in 2006.

At the time of writing Google shares are down 1.9 percent at $579 while Chinese rival Baidu rose 6.8 percent to $413 on the news.