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(Bloomberg) — Alphabet Inc. ‘s Google is laying off many other people working on its virtual assistant, hardware and engineering teams as part of an ongoing effort to cut costs and artificial intelligence.
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Affected workers included those running Google’s voice assistant and the Augmented True hardware team. The core engineering organization was also hit by cuts, the company said.
The cuts come as Google’s main web search business feels the warmth of its competitor’s artificial intelligence offerings, Microsoft Corp. and OpenAI, author of ChatGPT. In calls with investors in recent months, Google executives have pledged to examine their operations to identify spaces where they can make cuts and lose resources to invest in their top priorities.
“Throughout the second part of 2023, several of our teams made adjustments to be more effective and perform better, and to align their resources with their top product priorities,” a spokesperson for the company based in Los Angeles said in a statement. Mountain View, California. “Some groups continue to make those kinds of organizational adjustments, which come with some eliminations of roles globally. “
Alphabet shares traded slightly on Thursday, finally trading at $142. 08 in New York.
The discounts affected central and control employees. Google’s disclosures with the state of California show that 630 state employees were laid off this week, adding 4 vice presidents and 25 directors. Employees in those grades earn millions of dollars a year in compensation, according to a user familiar with the matter. The Alphabet Workers Union, which represents some Google employees, said more than 1,000 employees in total have been laid off so far.
Fitbit co-founders James Park and Eric Friedman will also leave Google as a result of the reorganization, a company spokesperson confirmed. Google acquired the smartwatch company in 2019 for $2. 1 billion.
Workers at the search giant have been on edge since January last year, when Alphabet announced it would cut about 12,000 jobs, or more than 6% of its global workforce. This shocked Silicon Valley. The company continued to make small cuts throughout the course. 2023, adding cutting groups focused on recruiting, news products and the Waze mapping app.
Read more: Amazon lays off many more people at Prime Video, unit of Studios
While the wide-ranging circular on the January 2023 budget cuts was telegraphed through Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, this year’s cuts were communicated through lower-level executives, such as vice presidents and human resources, according to an existing worker and a former worker.
Google employees and recently laid off staff shared data about discounts in Discord chats, hallway conversations and other social media, two existing employees told Bloomberg. A document outlining the jobs being eliminated, as well as resources for laid-off colleagues, circulated among staff on Wednesday and Thursday, an employee said.
Employees believed the company’s control would have learned from last year’s protests over large-scale task losses, an existing worker said, noting that Google is now focused almost exclusively on cutting costs. The worker said everyone is talking about having a plan B.
Workers said it was difficult to get a full picture of how many jobs were affected. Google — which had about 182,000 employees as of Sept. 30, according to regulatory filings — said more cuts could be expected throughout January as decisions are made at the department level. The company employed 190,700 workers before the layoffs last year, in addition to tens of thousands of contractors around the world.
One of the Google users who lost his homework this week said the first signs of trouble appeared when he tried to check his work email, only to realize he had been disconnected. He noticed a message saying he had lost his homework in his non-public email.
Over the past year, there have been several rounds of micro-layoffs, the worker said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of professional repercussions. He said it has killed morale at the company and isn’t conducive to creating trust.
Some Google employees have come to see January as a grim new annual year of mass layoffs.
While Google executives presented the cuts as a way to redirect resources on the company’s biggest priorities, the newly fired man said he and several of his laid-off colleagues were using AI.
Amazon. com Inc. also laid off many workers at its Prime Video business and studios this week, raising questions about whether any other primary task cutting circular is underway in Silicon Valley.
Semafor was the first to report the layoffs to the Google Assistant team, while 9to5Google was the first to report the hardware reorganization. Affected staff have begun to receive the news and will have the opportunity to apply for open positions elsewhere within Google, the company said.
–With Josh Eidelson, Olivia Solon and Ryan Gallagher.
(Updates with main points on the number of dismissed workers and seniority in paragraph 6).
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