Google cuts 12,000 jobs as layoffs spread across tech industry
Google is cutting 12,000 jobs, or around 6% of its employees, making it the latest tech business to do so as the COVID-19 pandemic-related economic boom wanes.
Google parent firm Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai told colleagues on Friday of the layoffs in an email that was also posted on the business' press blog.
It's one of the largest rounds of layoffs the company has ever experienced, and it joins the tens of thousands of other job losses recently announced by Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook parent company Meta, and other tech companies as they tighten their belts in the face of a gloomier outlook for the sector. Major corporations in the have reported at least 48,000 job layoffs just this month.
According to Pichai, the positions being terminated "cut across Alphabet, product areas, functions, levels, and regions." He expressed his "deep regret" over the layoffs.
Regulatory records show how Google's staff increased throughout the epidemic, growing from 119,000 at the end of 2019 to roughly 187,000 by late last year.
Google, which was established some 25 years ago, was "bound to go through challenging economic cycles," according to Pichai.
These are crucial times to narrow our focus, redesign our cost structure, and allocate our resources to our top priorities, he added.
The letter from Pichai states that there would be layoffs in the United States and other unnamed nations.
Smaller players are also being impacted by the job layoffs. Sophos, a cybersecurity company based in the UK, let go of 450 workers, or 10% of its whole workforce. In its second round of layoffs in less than a year, cryptocurrency trading platform Coinbase reduced 20% of its workforce, or around 950 employees, from the total.
Many CEOs of businesses have been criticised for expanding too quickly, but even with the most recent round of layoffs, these businesses are still significantly bigger than they were before the pandemic's economic boom started.