The brutal layoffs that global tech witnessed last year, is dragging itself into this year as well. While Amazon recently announced mass layoffs in its Prime Video and Studios divisions, its now Google, which is announcing fresh round of layoffs. Part of the restructuring and cost-cutting drive that started last year, Google is now laying off hundreds of employees in several of its core engineering divisions.
“Throughout the second half of 2023, a number of our teams made changes to become more efficient and work better, and to align their resources to their biggest product priorities,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement. “Some teams are continuing to make these kinds of organizational changes, which include some role eliminations globally.”
Google further added, that these fresh layoffs will affect employees in the Google voice assistant, hardware and central engineering teams. Employees have started receiving intimations of the same, and are being provided opportunity to apply at open roles within the company. Semafor first reported the layoffs to the Google Assistant team.
These layoffs, specially in the voice assistant teams, can be seen as a direct impact of AI — generative AI in particular. Google says that the layoffs will help improve its product offering in the voice assistant space. Last year, the company had announced that it was using generative AI chatbot Bard, to create a better version of the Google voice assistant. Additionally, The Information had reported late last year, that Google is planning extensive job cuts in its 30,000 strong advertising team as well.
