The Google headquarters in Mountain View, California, Jan. 30, 2023.
Marlena Sloss | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Google cut several hundred jobs across the corporate late Wednesday night because it continues to push for efficiency and give attention to its “biggest product priorities,” a spokesperson confirmed to CNBC.
The layoffs will impact employees inside Google’s hardware and central engineering teams, in addition to staff across Google Assistant, its voice-activated software product. Other parts of the corporate were also affected, in line with Google
Shares of Alphabet, which owns Google, were up down than 1% on Thursday.
The announcement marks the newest cost-cutting effort at Google as it really works to rein within the dramatic headcount growth it pursued through the pandemic. Last January, Google slashed its workforce by 12,000 people, or roughly 6% of its full-time employees. The corporate made other cuts to its recruiting and news divisions later within the 12 months.
Google has also shifted its focus to prioritize developments in areas like artificial intelligence, launching products just like the chatbot Bard and the massive language model Gemini because it races to maintain up with competitors like Microsoft and Amazon.
“To best position us for these opportunities, throughout the second half of 2023, a number of our teams made changes to develop into more efficient and work higher, and to align their resources to their biggest product priorities,” a Google spokesperson told CNBC in a press release. “Some teams are continuing to make these kinds of organizational changes, which include some role eliminations globally.”
Google also made significant cuts to diversity, equity and inclusion programs last 12 months, CNBC found.
The Alphabet Staff Union expressed disappointment concerning the latest round of layoffs at Google in a press release on X, formerly often called Twitter, late Wednesday, calling them “pointless.”
“Our members and teammates work hard each day to construct great products for our users, and the corporate cannot proceed to fireplace our coworkers while making billions every quarter,” the group wrote in a post. “We can’t stop fighting until our jobs are protected!”
The cuts at Google were first reported by 9to5Google and Semafor.
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