Google Announces Layoffs Across Company, Impacting Hardware and Engineering Teams

Google Inc’s parent company, Alphabet, is starting 2024 by cutting several hundred jobs across the company. The layoffs will impact employees within Google’s hardware and central engineering teams, as well as employees who work on Google Assistant, the company’s voice-activated software product. Other parts of the company are also affected.

The company stated that these changes are made to become more efficient and to align resources with the biggest product priorities. The layoffs will also affect the teams that produce Google’s Nest, Pixel, and VR devices, with a significant impact on the augmented reality team.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai expressed his regret for having to let go of talented employees and took full responsibility for the decisions that led to the layoffs. Pichai mentioned that these decisions were made after a thorough review of Google’s operations and that the job cuts are spread across Alphabet, product areas, functions, levels, and regions.

This news comes amidst other tech companies announcing layoffs. Amazon’s livestreaming platform, Twitch, recently announced a layoff of over 500 employees, while Discord and Duolingo have also made similar announcements.