As Yahoo announces its second round of layoffs in two months, Google is announcing that it will be embarking on a hiring spree this year. We first heard this morning from soon to be former CEO Eric Schmidt that the company will be adding 1,000 new employees in Europe. And Google’s SVP Engineering and Research Alan Eustace just published a post on the company’s website announcing that the search giant will ramp up hiring to record levels in 2011.

Eustace writes “I love Google because of our people. It’s inspiring to be part of the team. And that’s why I am excited about 2011—because it will be our biggest hiring year in company history. We’re looking for top talent—across the board and around the globe—and we’ll hire as many smart, creative people as we can to tackle some of the toughest challenges in computer science: like building a web-based operating system from scratch, instantly searching an index of more than 100 million gigabytes and even developing cars that drive themselves.”

In terms of staffing up, 2010 was the second largest year in terms of adding employees. Google hired more than 4,500 Googlers, primarily in engineering and sales. And in 2007, Google brought on more than 6,000 people.

Here are a few stats (most of which seem to have been announced that Eustace cited for Google’s growth:

Android now runs on over 100 devices with more than 300,000 activations each day.

Chrome has at least 120 million active users and it’s growing quickly.

Last year more than 1 million businesses switched to Google Apps and embraced its 100% web approach.

Yahoo announced this morning that it would be giving pink slips to 1 percent of its employee base, which amounts to roughly 100 to 150 staff members.