As part of its ongoing cost-cutting measures, Google has revealed plans to lay off a significant number of personnel from its digital assistant, hardware and engineering divisions. This announcement comes nearly a year after the company’s largest-ever layoffs, impacting 12,000 employees.
According to Bloomberg, the workforce reductions will affect teams working on Google Assistant, the voice-activated technology, as well as those in the augmented reality hardware wing and the central- engineering organisation.
A spokesperson from Google explained in a statement that in the latter half of 2023, several of the company’s teams underwent changes. The primary aim of these changes was to enhance efficiency and realign resources. The statement also revealed that some of the company’s teams are still implementing these organisational changes, unfortunately resulting in job cuts globally.
The affected employees have reportedly been informed of the layoffs and will be given the opportunity to apply for other available positions within Google.
However, the Alphabet Workers Union, which represents certain Google employees, has expressed discontent with these layoffs. The union declared on X that the members and colleagues work diligently every day to create excellent products for the users. It’s unacceptable for the company to continue terminating employees while it earns billions every quarter.
Recently, a news surfaced that Google may let go of 30,000 jobs in its ad sales division. Artificial intelligence (AI) was called the villain of this restructuring that may end up taking away 30,000 roles.
Performance Max, for instance, is one of the advanced AI-powered tools being embraced by the software major to automate processes. Though no official statement has been made regarding job cuts or downsizing plans, if the layoffs do happen, many roles will become redundant, including that of campaign specialists and account managers in the ad sales wing.
