Google lays off 1,000 workers, union says
Tech giant among others – including Amazon and Meta – to cut workforce as business predictions slowed down in the past year.
Google has implemented workforce reductions affecting approximately a thousand employees within its hardware, voice-assistance, and engineering divisions, as confirmed by the Alphabet Workers Union. The move is part of broader cost-cutting initiatives aimed at “responsibly investing in our company’s biggest priorities and the significant opportunities ahead,” stated Google in an official release.
While initially, Google indicated the elimination of a few hundred positions across engineering, hardware, and Assistant teams, the brunt of the impact was felt within the company’s augmented reality hardware sector. Subsequently, the Alphabet Workers Union asserted that the layoffs amounted to 1,000 workers. These measures align with Google and Alphabet executives’ commitments to cost reduction, as evidenced by Google’s announcement a year ago about laying off 12,000 employees, constituting approximately 6% of its workforce.
Simultaneous with the news of these workforce adjustments, Google also disclosed the deprecation of 17 “underutilized” features of Google Assistant. This includes functionalities such as playing audiobooks, sending emails, or initiating meditation sessions with Calm using voice commands.
In a recent post on X, formerly known as Twitter, the Alphabet Workers Union characterized the recent job cuts at Google as “another round of needless layoffs.” Expressing dissatisfaction, the union emphasized the hard work put in by its members and teammates to develop excellent products for users. The union underscored the incongruity of the company laying off employees while consistently generating billions in revenue each quarter, vowing to persist in the fight until job security is ensured.
Despite Google’s initial surge in growth during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, the company has found it necessary to revise its business forecasts as this momentum has diminished over the past year. This trend is not unique to Google, as other technology companies face similar challenges. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, has implemented substantial job cuts exceeding 20,000 positions. In December, Spotify announced a 17% reduction in its global workforce, marking its third round of layoffs in 2023 as part of a cost-cutting initiative to enhance profitability.
Recent developments at Amazon also reflect this pattern, with hundreds of employees laid off in its Prime Video and studios units, along with approximately 500 employees from its live-streaming platform Twitch. Amazon’s decision to cut jobs follows a significant hiring surge during the pandemic. In March, the company announced plans to lay off 9,000 employees, in addition to the 18,000 job cuts disclosed in January 2023.
The current landscape sees Google engaged in a fierce competition with Microsoft, both vying for supremacy in the artificial intelligence sector. Microsoft, a prominent player in office software, has intensified its artificial intelligence offerings to compete with Google. In September, Microsoft introduced the Copilot feature, integrating artificial intelligence into products such as its search engine Bing, the Edge browser, and Windows for corporate clients.
