Google is normally known for partying it up during the holidays, with celebrations often involving 10,000 people. However, this year, Google decided to reduce the celebration due to the economic crisis and its growing workforce, now at 20,000.

Silicon valley companies such as Yahoo, HP, Sun and others have reduced their workforce by 140,000 jobs during the last few months.

Google managed to do a better job than most other tech companies but Google’s departments will have smaller events. This would encourage camaraderie amongst employees who will celebrate more thriftily. The activities will include spending an afternoon volunteering and social dinner parties as well as museum outings in San Francisco.

Prior parties included ice sculptures of the company’s logo, karaoke booths, sushi buffet, virtual reality video game stations, and burlesque dancers.

Although in prior years many employees looked for dates using Craigslist, only few did so this year.