Google layoffs have affected over 12,000 employees and further incurred $2.1 billion (around ₹17,500 crore) in severance and related expenses during 2023.
Google Layoffs – Biggest In The History
The California based company has already spent $700 million on severance charges for additional layoffs, encompassing more than 1,000 roles in this month only.
The media reported that the parent company of Google, Alphabet ha revelec these figures while filing the fourth-quarter earnings release on Tuesday.
This all started, when Alphabet announced plans to cut 12,000 jobs during January 2023, almost forming the 6 percent of its global workforce.
So far, this is the biggest layoff in the history of Google.
Essential For The Company Growth
Although this seemed “essential” for the company, according to the chief executive Sundar Pichai.
This move has definitely affected the revenues as Google’s parent company reported a noteworthy return to double-digit revenue growth during the last quarter of the previous year.
The company has definitely got a boost from video-sharing platform YouTube and its cloud computing unit.
This latest revelation on Tuesday marked the Alphabet’s third consecutive quarter of increasing revenue growth.
It appears to be primarily driven by Google’s dominance in search and online advertising.
This growth has great significance as earlier it had witnessed the unprecedented drop in Google’s ad revenue.
Prior to that , Google could achieve almost two decades of uninterrupted growth, especially during the initial stages of the pandemic.
Despite Google’s ad sales demonstrating growth, still it lagged behind increases in other areas including cloud computing and YouTube subscriptions.
Interestingly, the fourth-quarter results exceeded analysts’ expectations, but Alphabet’s shares faced a dip of nearly 7 per cent in extended trading.
According to the company, its profit boosted in the final quarter due to the positive impact of artificial intelligence (AI).
Confirming the same, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said, “Each of these is already benefiting from our AI investments and innovation.”
It is noteworthy here that the CEO has further alerted its employees to anticipate further job cuts in the upcoming months, aiming to “simplify execution”.
The layoffs will concentrate on streamlining operations by “removing layers” from various departments to enhance the company’s efficiency, Pichai said in a memo.
Further adding, “These role eliminations are not at the scale of last year’s reductions, and will not touch every team.”
