SAN FRANCISCO, USA - Google Inc is cutting its sales and marketing team by roughly 200 employees, saying it had over-invested in certain parts of the company.

The move is the Web search leader's latest effort to cut costs amid a tough economy and a broad slowdown in advertising spending. In January, Google laid off about 100 recruiters and it said up to 40 people would be laid off in February, when Google pulled the plug on its radio advertising effort.

"When companies grow that quickly it's almost impossible to get everything right and we certainly didn't," Google Senior Vice President of Global Sales and Business Development Omid Kordestani said in an announcement posted on Google's blog on Thursday.

"In addition, we over-invested in some areas in preparation for the growth trends we were experiencing at the time," he added.

A Google spokesperson said the company will try to find new positions for some of the affected employees, but it will not be able to do so for all of them.