Google’s Ongoing Layoffs: Hundreds Receive Retrenchment Notices in Jan 2024
Explore Google's workforce challenges, AI speculation, layoffs, and a $260 million EU fine for market dominance.
Bloomberg reported that Google is one of the major contributors to the rising labor turnover. Employees associated with the Augmented Reality hardware team and Google Assistant, based on Google’s voice, have been severely affected and faced layoffs. Moreover, the Central Engineering Organization of Google has also witnessed layoffs in recent times.
Google kickstarted its New Year by firing hundreds of its workers. As per floating speculations by analytics, Artificial Intelligence (AI) will replace the employees of Google. In January 2023 also, the layoff of around 12,000 employees from Google was witnessed, as reported by the Economic Times.
However, the American multinational technology company stated that the decision regarding headcount cuts in the office is part of its regular practices. The company also reported that due to the increased efficiency of many teams, more positions will be eliminated in the second half of 2023.
6% Reduction in Workforce at Google
A 6% reduction in the workforce at Google was reported by Cemafor. The latest report mentioned that employees associated with the Google Assistant team have started receiving information about their layoffs.
The Alphabet workers union criticized this move, emphasizing that by September 2023, Alphabet, the parent company of Google, had 182,381 employees worldwide. Alphabet also declared a 6% increase in labor turnover, resulting in around 12,000 job losses at Google.
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260 Cr Dollar Fine Imposed
A $260 million fine has been imposed by the European Union (EU) on the American multinational technology company, Google. The EU has asked the apex court to recover this fine in case of any violation of competition laws. It was observed that Google had illegally taken advantage of its market dominance by providing shopping recommendations to users. Julian Kokot, the Advocate General, advised the court to “dismiss Google’s petition filed against the fine.””
