Google on Wednesday announced the layoff of hundreds of workers from a variety of departments, including services and engineering.
The divisions that are impacted include the Devices and Services PA team, which oversees Pixel, Nest, and Fitbit hardware, and the voice-activated Google Assistant, which is a part of the knowledge and information product team restructure.
As of September 30, 2023, the corporation employed 182,000 people. It verified this development and said the employment layoffs were a result of organizational adjustments.
“To best position us for these opportunities, 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. Some teams are continuing to make these kinds of organizational changes, which include some role eliminations globally,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement.
The company has also let go of employees in the Google Assistant team, according to Semafor. With Bard, the business began integrating AI-powered capabilities into Google Assistant last year in an effort to take Assistant “beyond voice.”
Rolling layoffs occurred at Google last year in a number of departments, including the news division in October, the recruiting team in September, and the Waze mapping application in June. This year’s widespread layoff at Google occurs one year after the internet giant slashed almost 12,000 positions, or 6% of its staff, in January 2023.
