Google is laying off hundreds of people amid cost cuts
Kyiv • UNN
Google is laying off hundreds of employees as part of cost-cutting, amid broader job cuts in the tech industry.
Google has laid off hundreds of employees working on hardware, voice assistance and engineering teams as part of cost-cutting measures, writes UNN citing AP.
Details
The cuts come as Google seeks to "responsibly invest in our company's most important priorities and significant future opportunities," the company said in a statement.
"Some teams continue to make these types of organizational changes, which include cutting some positions around the world," the report said.
Google previously said it was cutting several hundred positions, with much of the impact affecting its augmented reality hardware team.
The cuts follow promises by executives at Google and its parent company Alphabet to cut costs. A year ago, Google said it would lay off 12,000 employees, or about 6 percent of its workforce.
In a post on X - formerly known as Twitter - the Alphabet employee union called the job cuts "another round of unnecessary layoffs.
Supplement
Google isn't the only tech company cutting costs. Last year, Meta - Facebook's parent company - cut more than 20,000 jobs to appease investors. In 2023, Meta's stock price is up about 178%.
Spotify said in December it was cutting 17% of its global workforce, the third round of layoffs in 2023 for the music streaming service, as the company sought to cut costs and improve profitability.
Earlier this week, Amazon laid off hundreds of employees in its Prime Video and studios divisions. The company will also lay off about 500 employees who work on live streaming platform Twitch.
Amazon has cut thousands of jobs after hiring drastically during the pandemic. Amazon announced in March that it planned to lay off 9,000 employees, in addition to 18,000 employees the company said it would lay off in January 2023.
Google is currently in fierce competition with Microsoft as both companies look to lead the way in artificial intelligence.
Microsoft has expanded its artificial intelligence offerings to compete with Google. In September, Microsoft introduced Copilot, a feature for its enterprise customers that incorporates artificial intelligence into products such as the Bing search engine, the Edge browser, and Windows.
