Some companies tend to post jobs they don't have, to be able to show that they are productive and investing in resources. The reality is they just want to show competition/shareholders that they are hiring a lot of people and investing in new markets. Most of those jobs will be re-posted again and again as they are never filled. Some other nasty companies put jobs online as a trap to interview competition exec/directors and know more about their strategy, then they never hire them. Welcome to the world of greed.

I concur. I have seen at places where I work that even with complete hiring freeze there are open positions posted on job portal. And as you said at higher level it must be to glean information.

An acquittance who worked at Cisco mentioned a month back or so that it was in trouble. In fact, the person mentioned switching over to another company for the same reason.

This news suggests that those apprehensions were not unfounded.