Is This Beleaguered Tech Giant Turning to Google for Help?

Investors haven’t hesitated to let Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HPQ) know that they think the company is in trouble. Shares have tumbled 41.5 percent year over year as HP, by and large, has failed to keep up with the changing technological landscape. The company is best known as a PC maker, and where once this put it at the top of the industry, now it’s struggling for relevancy.

Now, H-P only leads the PC market if tablet sales are factored out of the equation. Including tablets as personal computers, Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) claims the top spot in the PC market in the fourth quarter of 2012, backed by 75 percent growth in its iPad segment that brought total shipments to 27 million units. That represented a market share of over 20 percent, which compares to HP’s 15 million shipments and 11 percent share for the same quarter. The beleaguered American company just barely managed to edge out Lenovo by 200,000 shipments for the period, a pretty narrow margin.

Interviewed on stage at the Gartner Symposium IT Expo, CEO Meg Whitman faced tough questions about H-P’s status and direction as it faces what many see as a do-or-die scenario…