Google To Continue Its Job Cut Streak

(RTTNews) - In a memo titled "2024 priorities and the year ahead," Google CEO Sundar Pichai informed staff members that more job cuts should be anticipated in the upcoming months as the company works to expand its artificial intelligence capabilities. This follows a significant headcount reduction of over 12,000 in 2023.

Google launched Gemini, its most sophisticated AI model, to directly compete with OpenAI's ChatGPT, which has a multiyear, multibillion-dollar partnership with rival Microsoft (MSFT). Google made a portion of Gemini's extremely sophisticated technology available through Bard, its AI assistant, when it launched on December 6th, as part of its attempt to gain an advantage in the AI competition.

Since last week, Google has been implementing job cuts in several departments. The company has already implemented job cuts in various departments, including YouTube, which announced a restructuring of its operations and creator management teams, resulting in about 100 job losses.

This news follows the search engine giant's decision to lay off "several hundred" employees from its advertisement sales team. Before taking a severance payout, these workers will have a brief window of opportunity to find another position within the organization.

In an apparent effort to carry on with operations despite a large workforce reduction, Google plans to reorganize its team structure. "Hardware, ad sales, search, shopping, maps, policy, core engineering, and YouTube teams" are among the teams that the company will be reorganizing, according to The Verge.

Pichai also stated that "role eliminations are not at the scale of last year's reductions, and will not touch every team," but "to be upfront, some teams will continue to make resource allocation decisions."