Google headquarters in Mountain View, California, on January 30, 2023.
Marlena Sloss | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Google cut several hundred jobs across the company late Wednesday as the company continues to push for efficiencies and focus on its “biggest product priorities,” a spokesperson confirmed to CNBC.
The layoffs will affect employees of Google’s hardware and central engineering teams, as well as workers at Google Assistant, its voice-activated software product. According to Google, other parts of the company were also affected
Shares in Alphabet, which owns Google, fell 1% on Thursday.
The announcement is the latest cost-cutting effort by Google as it seeks to restore the dramatic headcount growth it sought during the pandemic. Last January, Google cut its workforce by 12,000 people, roughly 6% of its full-time workforce. The company made further cuts to its recruitment and intelligence divisions later in the year.
Google has also shifted its focus to prioritize development in areas such as artificial intelligence, launching products such as the Bard chatbot and the large language model Gemini as it races to keep up with competitors such as Microsoft and Amazon.
“To best position ourselves for these opportunities, many of our teams have made changes throughout the second half of 2023 to become more efficient and perform better, and to align our resources with our biggest product priorities,” a Google spokesperson told CNBC. declaration. “Some teams continue to make these kinds of organizational changes that include the global elimination of some roles.”
Google also made significant cuts to diversity, equity and inclusion programs last year, CNBC has learned.
Alphabetical Workers Union expressed disappointment about the latest round of layoffs at Google in a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter, late Wednesday, calling them “unnecessary.”
“Our members and teammates work hard every day to build great products for our users, and the company cannot continue to lay off our associates while making billions every quarter,” the group wrote in a post. “We will not stop fighting until our jobs are safe!”
9to5Google and Semafor were the first to report on the cuts at Google.
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