Google Lays Off Hundreds Amid Tech Industry Turmoil

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA — Several hundred Google employees were laid off starting Wednesday night, according to company and union officials.

The cuts included a few hundred roles related to Google Assistant and a few hundred more across other parts of the company’s knowledge and information product teams. Additionally, a few hundred positions were cut in devices and services, with the majority affected being in augmented reality hardware, and a few hundred jobs were affected in central engineering.

“As we’ve said, we’re responsibly investing in our company's biggest priorities and the significant opportunities ahead,” the Mountain View-based company said in a prepared statement, adding the changes were made to improve efficiency and align resources with product priorities.

The cuts follow pledges by executives of Google and its parent company Alphabet to reduce costs. A year ago, Google said it would lay off 12,000 employees or around 6 percent of its workforce.

“Tonight, Google began another round of needless layoffs,” the Alphabet Workers Union posted on social media. “Our members and teammates work hard every day to build great products for our users, and the company cannot continue to fire our coworkers while making billions every quarter. We won’t stop fighting until our jobs are safe!”

Google is not the only technology company cutting back. In the past year, Meta — the parent company of Facebook — has slashed more than 20,000 jobs to reassure investors. Meta's stock price gained about 178 percent in 2023.

Spotify said in December that it was axing 17 percent of its global workforce, the music streaming service's third round of layoffs in 2023 as it moved to slash costs and improve its profitability.

Earlier this week, Amazon laid off hundreds of employees in its Prime Video and studios units. It also will lay off about 500 employees who work on its livestreaming platform Twitch.

Amazon has cut thousands of jobs after a hiring surge during the pandemic. In March, Amazon announced that it planned to lay off 9,000 employees, on top of 18,000 employees it said that it would lay off in January 2023.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.