Google announces another round of layoffs as part of 'large scale' restructuring

Google is laying off a 'large' number of employees while other jobs will be shipped overseas, the tech giant revealed on Wednesday.

The unspecified number of firings are not company-wide and affected employees will be able to apply for internal roles, a spokesman confirmed.

A small percentage of the impacted roles will be required to relocate to hubs the company is investing in, including Chicago, Atlanta, India and Dublin.

The layoffs follow a slew of job cuts across Google and the tech and media industry this year, adding to fears that layoffs may continue as companies grapple with economic uncertainty.

'Throughout the second half of 2023 and into 2024, a number of our teams made changes to become more efficient and work better, remove layers and align their resources to their biggest product priorities,' the spokesperson added. 

Google is laying off an unspecified number of employees as part of 'large scale' restructuring at the technology giant

Company CEO Sundar Pichai reportedly told employees at the start of the year to expect more job cuts

Although the number of layoffs peaked in 2023, it is continuing into 2024 as Google embarks on 'large scale' restructuring

Employees across several of Google's teams in its real estate and finance departments have been affected, according to a Business Insider report.

The finance teams affected include Google's treasury, business services, and revenue cash operations, it added.

Google's finance chief, Ruth Porat, sent an email to staff saying the restructuring includes expanding growth to Bangalore, Mexico City, and Dublin.

Although the full scale of the cuts is unknown, one employee described then as 'pretty large-scale.'

Google let go of hundreds of workers across multiple teams at the start of the year, including its engineering, hardware and assistant teams as the company ramps up investment and builds its artificial intelligence offerings.

Company CEO Sundar Pichai reportedly told employees at the start of the year to expect more job cuts.

In January, the company announced it was laying off more than 700 people from its San Francisco, Sunnyvale and Mountain View locations in four different notices filed.

Most of those impacted worked on its augmented reality hardware team responsible for Pixel, Nest and Fitbit. 

The unspecified number of firings are not company-wide and affected employees will be able to apply for internal roles, a spokesman confirmed. 

Major tech companies continue to lay off employees amid advancements in AI and despite increasing revenue 

News of the latest cuts emerged the day after nine Google employees staged sit-ins at the company's offices in California and New York in protest over the tech giant's contract with the Israeli government. The two events have not been linked.

The tech giant said it was also permanently shutting down its Mountain View daycare center and firing 73 teachers and school workers.

The layoffs began on March 10 and were slated to continue into August. 

The news of the latest firings broke the same day that it separately emerged nine Google workers were arrested after staging sits-ins at the company's offices in New York City and California to protest the tech giant's contract with the Israeli government.

Hundreds of people watched online via a live stream from the protest as the employees were taken into custody. Video posted to social media shows police leading them out of the building in handcuffs. 

Google's cuts follow other savage layoffs in Silicon Valley, many of which came from other big investors in AI such as Amazon and Discord.

Since May 2023, 4,600 jobs have been lost due to AI, with nearly 41,800 employees laid off across 159 tech companies so far this year, according to data from Layoffs.fyi.

The firings come despite Big Tech companies seeing a major increase in profits, with Google and Microsoft's parent company, Alphabet Inc., reporting its shares jumped percent and is expected to grow its revenue by 12 percent for the first quarter of 2024.

Tech companies including Google, Microsoft, Meta, Salesforce and Amazon fired between six to 13 percent of their workforce last year, CNBC reports.