The Alphabet company has announced plans to lay off hundreds of employees within its Voice Assistant division while several hundred positions are being eliminated in the hardware team overseeing Pixel, Nest, and Fitbit, alongside the sacking of a majority of personnel working in the AR team
Google announces new round of layoffs, resulting in hundreds of job redundancies. (Credit: Grendelkhan/Wikimedia Commons)
Internet major Google is taking up another round of layoffs, this time impacting hundreds of employees across various teams in line with its ongoing efforts to implement cost-cutting measures.
The Alphabet company has announced plans to make hundreds of employees within its Voice Assistant division redundant.
Additionally, several hundred positions are being eliminated in the hardware team overseeing Pixel, Nest, and Fitbit. On the other hand, the majority of personnel working in the augmented reality (AR) team are being sacked, reported Reuters.
The central engineering team at Google is also experiencing the impact of these layoffs, affecting hundreds of roles, according to the company.
Fitness tracking company Fitbit’s co-founders Eric Friedman and James Park are also among those who are set to leave Google. The latter closed the $2.1bn acquisition of Fitbit in 2021.
Despite acquiring Fitbit, Google has been releasing updated versions of its Pixel Watch, a product that directly competes with certain devices from Fitbit and the Apple Watch.
A Google spokesperson stated: “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 organisational changes, which include some role eliminations globally.”
The spokesperson refrained from providing details on the exact number of positions affected. The precise count of individuals within the Google Assistant software and other teams remains unclear at this time.
Alphabet Workers Union (AWU-CWA) on X (formerly Twitter) stated: “Tonight, Google began another round of needless layoffs. Our members and teammates work hard every day to build great products for our users, and the company cannot continue to fire our coworkers while making billions every quarter.
“We won’t stop fighting until our jobs are safe!”
Last year in January, Google’s parent company Alphabet announced its decision to execute job cuts to reduce the tech major’s workforce by around 12,000 employees. As of 30 September 2023, which is the end of Q3 2023, Alphabet had a global workforce of over 182,000.