Google lays off hundreds of workers

Google will lay off hundreds of employees across its virtual assistant, augmented reality and central engineering teams, a spokesperson confirmed to The Hill on Thursday.

The cuts will affect hundreds of employees working on the Google Assistant, as well as hundreds of employees in other parts of the company's knowledge and information products team, a spokesperson said. A spokesperson declined to say how many Google employees would be laid off.

Hundreds more positions from the Digital Services and Products area will also be eliminated, mostly from the first-party augmented reality hardware team, as well as hundreds of other positions from the central engineering team.

“As we've said in the past, we are investing responsibly in our biggest priorities and the important opportunities ahead,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement.

“To best position us for these opportunities, throughout the second half of 2023, we will enable our many teams to work more efficiently and better, and direct resources to our biggest product priorities. We have made changes to adjust,” they added. “Some teams continue to make these types of organizational changes, including eliminating some roles globally.”

The layoffs appear to be part of the latest round of layoffs in the tech industry, as Amazon also announced Wednesday that it would lay off hundreds of employees across its streaming and studio operations. Reuters report.

Video game streaming platform Twitch similarly announced plans to lay off 500 employees, about 35% of its workforce. bloomberg.

The industry faced mass layoffs early last year. Google's parent company Alphabet cut about 12,000 jobs in January 2023, Microsoft laid off about 10,000 people the same month, and Amazon cut about 18,000 jobs.

The Alphabet union denounced the layoffs as “another unnecessary layoff” in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, late Wednesday night.

“Our members and teammates work hard every day to build great products for our users, and our company cannot continue to lay off our colleagues while making billions of dollars every quarter.” the union wrote. “We will not stop fighting until our jobs are safe!”