Google has laid off hundreds of employees working in its hardware, voice assistance and engineering teams as part of its cost-cutting measures.
The cuts come as Google seeks to “invest responsibly in our company’s biggest priorities and the important opportunities ahead,” it said in a statement.
“Some teams are still making these types of organizational changes, including eliminating some roles globally,” he added.
Google had already announced the elimination of several hundred positions, most in its augmented reality hardware team.
The cuts follow a commitment by executives at the firm and its parent company, Alphabet, to reduce costs. Google said a year ago it would lay off 12,000 employees, about 6% of its workforce.
The Alphabet Workers Union described the staff cuts as “another round of unnecessary layoffs” in a message on X, formerly Twitter.
“Our members and colleagues work hard every day to build great products for our users, and the company cannot continue to lay off our colleagues while making billions every quarter,” the union wrote. “We will not stop fighting until our jobs are workers are safe!”
Google is not the only technology company immersed in a process of cuts. In the last year, Meta — Facebook’s parent company — has cut more than 20,000 jobs to reassure investors. The group’s shares gained around 178% in 2023.
Spotify announced in December the layoff of 17% of its global workforce, in the third round of layoffs for the streaming music service in 2023 in its attempt to reduce costs and improve its profitability.
Earlier this week, Amazon fired hundreds of employees from its Prime Video and Studios units. It will also lay off around 500 workers from its live streaming platform Twitch.
Amazon has cut thousands of jobs following a surge in hiring during the pandemic. In March it announced that it planned to lay off 9,000 employees, in addition to the 18,000 it had already announced in January 2023.
Google maintains an intense rivalry with Microsoft in its fight to assume leadership in the field of artificial intelligence.
Microsoft has strengthened its offerings in that field to rival what Google offers. In September it introduced the Copilot feature, which incorporates artificial intelligence into products such as its Bing search engine, the Edge browser and Windows for corporate customers.
Source: With information from AP
