The winter holidays are a time of giving they say. Well, this year Yahoo! gave some 600 of its employees, or about 4% of its work force, the pink slip. A Yahoo! spokesperson explained that, as part of the third wave of layoffs at the company since late 2008, roughly 600 employees have been let go. The spokesperson explained that the layoffs are part of the company’s “ongoing strategy to best position Yahoo! for revenue growth and margin expansion and to support our strategy to deliver differentiated products to the marketplace.”

I’m guessing this is not a big consolation for all the people who are now out of a job, who will start a new year jobless. Speaking of which, Yahoo! did not specify where the cuts came from, but rumor on the web has it as mainly from its struggling consumer products group.

If Yahoo! is letting people go, Google is having problems keeping people on board. To ensure its employees will not move to another company, Google will make sure its employees will have a very merry Christmas this year. About a month ago the Mountain View-based search engine giant announced that it will give all of its employees a holiday bonus of $1,000. Google will take care of all the taxes so its employees will get precisely $1,000.

But wait, it doesn’t stop there, it gets better. Come January 2011, all of Google’s employees will get a raise of at least 10%. Every one of Google’s 23,000 employees will get at least 10$; some of them will get more than that. How much will all this cost Google? It is estimated that this will cost Google about $1 billion.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt said in an email to all employees that “we want to make sure that you feel rewarded for your hard work. We want to continue to attract the best people to Google.”