The owner of Polish instant messaging service Gadu-Gadu has laid off a large number of employees, according to daily Puls Biznesu.

The company underwent a deep restructuring last week, and from a team of 300 only 60 employees are left, the newspaper wrote without citing its sources.

“We have made a lot of changes as a result of the economic slowdown and the worsening situation on the advertising market, and [with changes] come layoffs,” said Jarosław Rybus, Gadu-Gadu’s spokesperson. He did not confirm the actual number of employees who were made redundant.

The company has been experiencing financial trouble ever since 2009, when it reported losses of zł.6 million. Gadu-Gadu, which now is officially called GG, was launched in 2000.

Its creator was Łukasz Foltyn, and the project was financed by Equity Holding. Equity Holding made the company public, and then sold it to Naspers. To this day GG is the leader in the Polish instant messaging market, through which hundreds of thousands of instant messages are sent daily.