[raverbashing]

Apple has 26k employees in retail: http://www.apple.com/about/job-creation/

Apart from that, in Google most (core) jobs are software related, in Apple not so much (there's hardware, design, logistics, manufacturing specialists - even if the bulk is @ Foxconn and similar contractors).

Even if we consider software jobs only, I believe the bulk @ Apple is working in OSX/iOS, not to mention iWork, Final Cut, etc and not directly in Cloud infrastructure.

[smackfu]

Practically speaking, for the problem in question, none of these employee counts matter much. 200 engineers is a large number to put on any project, but a tenth of a percent of their total employee count.

[vvhn]

>Apple has 26k employees in retail: http://www.apple.com/about/job-creation/

Not that it matters a whole lot, but, as the website says that's just the US number.

The total number of employees in retail according to Apple's last 10-K filing in October 2012

( http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/AAPL/2393147114x0xS11... )

was 42,400.

" Employees As of September 29, 2012, the Company had approximately 72,800 full-time equivalent employees and an additional 3,300 full-time equivalent temporary employees and contractors. Approximately 42,400 of the total full-time equivalent employees worked in the Company’s Retail segment. "

[melling]

That page says Apple has 80,000 employees, leaving them about the same size as Google. Google has people on the payroll buidling Google Glasses, The Google Car, Gmail, App Engine, Go, Macs, Docs, Chrome OS, and a lot more projects than we probably know. Remember this: http://www.google.com/enterprise/search/

It's true that Apple is highly focused, and they probably have half, if not a quarter of the products that Google has.