Google, which has recently been accelerating its AI initiatives with models like Veo 2 and Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking, has now laid off 10% of its managerial staff, including managers, directors and vice presidents. This move could be considered part of the company’s long-running efforts to improve efficiency and implement effective cost-cutting measures, and also introduce AI to its own systems. Alphabet Inc. and Google CEO Sundar Pichai reportedly confirmed the decision during an all-hands meeting held on Wednesday.
With more than 182,502 full-time employees worldwide, the development is not entirely surprising, as the tech titan has already been implementing cost-cutting measures as part of its ‘efficiency initiative’ since September 2022. By January 2024, the company had cut more than 12,000 jobs or nearly 6.4 percent of its global workforce.
At the beginning of this year, Google-owned video streaming giant YouTube laid off hundreds of employees. In the meantime, Google has undergone several restructuring efforts (this layoff is also the fourth one this year alone) across various divisions, including core engineering, Google Assistant, advertisements and augmented reality projects, affecting thousands of employees.
Business Insider reports that as part of this new move, affected employees will either be “transitioned to individual contributor roles” or have their positions completely eliminated. However, prior to this, in an open letter to employees, Pichai took full responsibility for the decisions regarding these job-cutting efforts, explaining that the company had to sustain periods of dramatic growth.
According to data provided by layoffs.fyi, approximately 539 tech companies around the globe have laid off 150,034 employees in 2024 to date. In fact, in 2023, around 1,193 companies issued pink slips to 264,220 employees in total. Notably, Google’s restructuring efforts have ramped up once again, especially with OpenAI seemingly challenging the company in its core competency — search engine. Recently, OpenAI launched its built-in search engine with new features for all users. This could pose a significant threat to Google Search, which accounted for more than 57% of its revenue last year.
Speaking about the latest financial numbers, Alphabet’s third-quarter (Q3 2024) earnings report revealed strong results, surpassing analyst expectations. The company reported earnings per share of $2.12, exceeding the expected $1.85, and revenue of $88.27 billion, which grew 15% year-over-year. YouTube advertising revenue reached $8.92 billion, while Google Cloud generated $11.35 billion. Google’s search business continued to perform strongly, generating $49.4 billion in revenue. Alphabet attributed its strong cloud performance to its artificial intelligence offerings, which helped drive nearly 35% year-over-year growth in cloud revenue, up from $8.41 billion in the same quarter last year.
