Last updated on March 21st, 2024 at 08:50 am

Tech giant, along with Amazon and Meta, to reduce workforce due to slower business predictions in the past year

Google has cut a thousand jobs from its hardware, voice-assistance, and engineering teams as a cost-saving measure, reported by the Alphabet Workers Union.

The layoffs are part of Google’s effort to “responsibly invest in our company’s top priorities and the significant opportunities ahead,” the company stated. “Some teams are continuing to make these types of organizational changes, which include eliminating some roles globally.”

Initially, Google indicated that it was cutting a few hundred positions across its engineering, hardware, and Assistant teams, with a significant impact on its augmented reality hardware division. The following day, the Alphabet Workers Union reported that the number of affected workers was 1,000. These layoffs come after commitments by Google and Alphabet executives to reduce costs. About a year ago, Google announced plans to lay off 12,000 employees, representing roughly 6% of its workforce.

On the same day news of the layoffs emerged, Google announced the deprecation of 17 “underutilized” features of Google Assistant. These included functions such as playing audiobooks, sending emails, or initiating a meditation session with Calm using voice commands.

In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, the Alphabet Workers Union characterized the job cuts as “another round of needless layoffs.” The union expressed concern, stating, “Our members and colleagues work diligently every day to develop outstanding products for our users, and the company cannot continue to dismiss our coworkers while generating billions in revenue every quarter.” They concluded, “We will continue to advocate until our jobs are secure!”

Google saw unprecedented growth in the initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the company has had to revise its business projections as this growth has slowed over the past year.

Google is not the only tech company facing this situation. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, has cut over 20,000 jobs. In December, Spotify announced plans to lay off 17% of its global workforce. This marked the music streaming service’s third round of layoffs in 2023 as it sought to reduce costs and enhance profitability.

Earlier this week, Amazon implemented layoffs affecting hundreds of employees in its Prime Video and studios units. Additionally, approximately 500 employees working on its live-streaming platform, Twitch, will be laid off. Amazon has been reducing its workforce after a surge in hiring during the pandemic. In March, the company announced plans to lay off 9,000 employees, in addition to the 18,000 employees it had previously stated it would lay off in January 2023.

Google is currently engaged in a heated competition with Microsoft as both companies vie for dominance in the artificial intelligence sector. The software giant has intensified its artificial intelligence offerings to compete with Google. In September, Microsoft introduced a Copilot feature that integrates artificial intelligence into products such as its search engine Bing, browser Edge, and Windows for its corporate customers.