Even Google’s parent company, Alphabet, isn’t safe from dark economic clouds, revealing on Friday that it plans to lay off about 12,000 employees, or 6% of its staff, and become became the latest tech giant to announce major cuts.
The job cuts were the company’s biggest ever, The Wall Street Journal reported, and will affect different units and regions.
“I am confident of the enormous opportunity ahead given the strength of our mission, the value of our products and services, and our early investments in AI,” said Alphabet and Google CEOs. , Sundar Pichai emphasized in a memo he shared on his blog. Saying he has “some hard news to share”, he also takes “full responsibility for the decisions that have brought us here”.
The CEO noted on the layoffs: “This means saying goodbye to some of the incredibly talented people we’ve worked hard to recruit and have enjoyed working with. I am extremely sorry for that. … Over the past two years, we have seen periods of strong growth. To match and drive that growth, we recruited for an economic reality that was different from the reality we face today.”
Pichai also writes: “As a nearly 25 year old company, we are bound to go through tough economic cycles. These are key times to strengthen our focus, restructure our cost base, and direct our talent and capital to our highest priorities. Being restricted in some areas allows us to bet big on others. The company turnaround to be AI-first in previous years has led to breakthroughs in our businesses and the industry as a whole. Thanks to those early investments, Google products are better than ever. And we’re also ready to share some brand new experiences for users, developers, and businesses.”
The parent Meta platform of Amazon, Facebook and Instagram, and Microsoft are among the other tech powerhouses that have recently revealed employee layoffs. Amazon said earlier this month it would cut 18,000 employees, while Microsoft earlier this week said it would lay off 10,000. Meta announced plans to cut 11,000 employees last year, with the likes of Snap, Twitter and Netflix also making significant cuts by 2022.
