Google is laying off hundreds of employees across its hardware, assistant, and engineering...

[midian182]

What just happened? Google has become the latest tech company to lay off hundreds of employees. The job losses will affect those working in its voice assistant, hardware, and engineering teams as the company looks to cut costs and put more focus on artificial intelligence.

Several Google divisions are being impacted by the job reductions, including core engineering and Google Assistant, but the majority of losses will be within the hardware division. Most of the hardware cuts will affect a team working on augmented reality, news that comes just weeks ahead of Apple launching the Vision Pro, while companies such as Samsung and Sony are preparing to launch rival headsets.

Hardware teams responsible for Pixel, Nest, and Fitbit will see layoffs. Fitbit, which Google bought for $2.1 billion in 2021, is reportedly losing co-founders James Park and Eric Friedman along with other leaders.

Tonight, Google began another round of needless layoffs. 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!

– Alphabet Workers Union (AWU-CWA) (@AlphabetWorkers) January 11, 2024

Google has also announced it will be deprecating 17 "underutilized" features in Google Assistant. These include playing and controlling audiobooks on Google Play Books with your voice, using your voice to send an email, video or audio message, and starting a meditation session with Calm by using a voice command. All of which illustrates the declining interest in Google Assistant.

"Throughout the second half of 2023, a number of our teams made changes to become more efficient and work better, and to align their resources to their biggest product priorities," a spokesperson for Google said in a statement. "Some teams are continuing to make these kinds of organizational changes, which include some role eliminations globally."

Those priorities likely include artificial intelligence. Many companies are putting more focus in the area, often at the expense of jobs elsewhere – Duolingo said AI was partly to blame after it laid off 10% of contract workers.

Google was one of many tech companies to announce mass layoffs early last year, the result of overhiring during the pandemic when firms increased their headcounts to cope with the increased demand for their services. Parent Alphabet announced that 12,000 jobs were going, leading to employee walkouts at some global offices.

Google isn't the only tech giant to announce job cuts this week. Amazon is eliminating hundreds of jobs at Prime Video just weeks before it introduces ads to the streaming service. Subsidiary Twitch is also laying off a third of its staff.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/101499-google-announces-major-layoffs-across-multiple-divisions-including.html

 

[havok585]

That tweet is pathetic !

Dude, any company is not OBLIGATED to keep you employed if they desire to change their structure (accomodate AI or other automated works) for their own benefit ! Yes they make billions, and they want to make even more ! That's your capitalism 100% at work there, enjoy the fruits.

On the other hand, governments could implement tougher regulations/sanctions through their Labour Acts/or equivalent that protect employees.

 

[James Ryan]

I recently saw another article about them laying off 30,000 employees from the ads departments. All of which are going to be replaced with AI. Ads are going to get really, really wild soon.

I also suspect the AI replacement figures are way too conservative. We've already seen a ton of movement in the first month of 2024 already.

 

[VaRmeNsI]

What workers forget is that they are providing a service (labor) to a customer (employer), forcing them to hire you or pay you more than they want is just as unfair as a worker being forced to pay for something they don't want.

 

[Uncle Al]

Bottom line for all of these companies is the fact that the purchasing power still is controlled by people. Lay too many of them off the trickle down effect is no buying and that results in loss of sales. Unfortunately businesses today only look ahead to the next quarterly report rather than planning out 5, 10, 20 years or more. If they did their planning they would see that this is all self defeating.

 

[Anton Longshot]

It'll be worth it once they've brought back Hangouts! [joking]

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Bottom line for all of these companies is the fact that the purchasing power still is controlled by people. Lay too many of them off the trickle down effect is no buying and that results in loss of sales. Unfortunately businesses today only look ahead to the next quarterly report rather than planning out 5, 10, 20 years or more. If they did their planning they would see that this is all self defeating.

-Nah its cool they'll just invent AI consumers that will buy their stuff and then they won't even need to be part of the macro economy anymore.

Robots making stuff, robots servicing stuff, robots buying stuff. Humanity lies in ruins, 10 65yo uber rich people left to repopulate the wasteland.

 

[RudyBob]

Bottom line for all of these companies is the fact that the purchasing power still is controlled by people. Lay too many of them off the trickle down effect is no buying and that results in loss of sales. Unfortunately businesses today only look ahead to the next quarterly report rather than planning out 5, 10, 20 years or more. If they did their planning they would see that this is all self defeating.

I would never have taken you for a trickle down. It works just ask Ron

 

[Dimitrios]

I recently saw another article about them laying off 30,000 employees from the ads departments. All of which are going to be replaced with AI. Ads are going to get really, really wild soon.

I also suspect the AI replacement figures are way too conservative. We've already seen a ton of movement in the first month of 2024 already.

Yup like before Elon took control of Twitter, it was being run by the F B I and certain political side which I won't say here. Most of the employees were doing nothing and getting paid crazy money. I worry about AI because Obama, Harris, Biden and a few others openly admitted they are pushing it strongly, oddly. The SCARY results to me will be using AI as an escape goat. One example is if something badly goes wrong or starts wars, rioting & looting etc they will just blame AI. People around the world can push their agenda using AI with less effort and time.

A perfect example of this toxicity is using AI to pump out false information, like what you see in the comment section of most YOUTUBE channels. You will soon see AI messing around with kids and teens with interfering with their emotion and peer pressure etc. Sorry for the ramble.

 

[FaTaL]

That tweet is pathetic !

Dude, any company is not OBLIGATED to keep you employed if they desire to change their structure (accomodate AI or other automated works) for their own benefit ! Yes they make billions, and they want to make even more ! That's your capitalism 100% at work there, enjoy the fruits.

On the other hand, governments could implement tougher regulations/sanctions through their Labour Acts/or equivalent that protect employees.

Agree it is pathetic. Its also why it only got 427 likes.