“We are investing responsibly in our biggest priorities and the great opportunities ahead,” a Google spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
While Google continues to make job cuts, this time reportedly laying off employees in its finance and real estate divisions, the company continues to invest in its geographic growth hubs in Ireland, the US and India.
The cuts affected teams across the Mountain View, California-based cloud giant's finance, business services, revenue cash operations and other divisions, according to Business Insider.
In a statement to CRN, a Google spokesperson said the company is “simplifying our organizational structure to reduce bureaucracy and layers, while giving employees more opportunities to work on our most innovative, most important advancements and biggest company priorities.”
[RELATED: Tech Company Layoffs In 2024: The Latest Cuts In Q1]
Google Layoffs
“As we have said before, we are investing responsibly in our biggest priorities and the great opportunities ahead,” the spokesperson said. “To best position ourselves for these opportunities, we have made changes across many of our teams in late 2023 and into 2024 to drive efficiencies, improve operations, streamline hierarchies and align resources to our biggest product priorities.”
A spokesperson said the cuts are not company-wide and that the reorganization is part of the company's efforts to ensure it can address priorities. Affected employees can apply for open roles within Google and receive outplacement services and severance pay in accordance with local requirements.
Most of the affected roles will not be relocated, but a small number will be relocated to domestic and international locations receiving the investment, including India, Chicago, Atlanta and Dublin, the spokesman said.
In January, Google CEO Sundar Pichai told employees to expect more layoffs in 2024, but they wouldn't be as bad as those in 2023. That month, more than 1,000 Google employees were laid off across divisions ranging from the Google Assistant to the Devices and Services group, plus “hundreds” of employees in the ad sales group.
Google announced in January 2023 that it would lay off 12,000 employees as part of a shift to investing in artificial intelligence amid a decline in business IT spending since the peak of the global pandemic.
Google joins a host of other technology vendors, including Intel and Amazon Web Services, that are cutting staff this year.