Google lays off hundreds of employees to cut costs

Alphabet’s Google announced it would lay off hundreds of employees across various teams as the company continues to cut costs, Reuters reported on Thursday.
According to the announcement, Fitbit co-founders James Park and Eric Friedman are also leaving the company.
The layoff will include hundreds at the Voice Assistant unit, and others in the hardware team at Pixel, Nest, and Fitbit.
The majority of the employees at the augmented reality (AR) team are also being laid off.
The company also added that hundreds of roles at the central engineering team are impacted by the lay off as well.
“Throughout 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,” a spokesperson for Google told Reuters in a statement.
The specific number of roles to be impacted was not provided, as Reuters reported that the layoffs come at a time when the company is seeking to adopt artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.
In January 2023, Alphabet said it will cut 12,000 jobs, around six per cent of its global workforce.
By September 2023, the company had 182,381 employees across the globe.