Google to lay off 12,000 employees; CEO Pichai apologises for decision

New Delhi: Alphabet Inc, Google's parent company has announced it will reduce its workforce by laying off 12,000 or 6% of the workforce worldwide. The cuts mark the latest to shake the technology sector and come days after rival Microsoft Corp said it would lay off 10,000 workers.

As per CEO Sundar Pichai, 12,000 employees will be let go in the US and other countries.

Pichai, in an email to Google employees, apologising to employees said, “I take full responsibility.” Pichai wrote that the company will be paying severance packages and offering six months of healthcare, job placements, immigration, and other types of support to the employees affected by this.

“We’ve decided to reduce our workforce by approximately 12,000 roles. We’ve already sent a separate email to employees in the US who are affected. In other countries, this process will take longer due to local laws and practices,” the mail read.

“Over the past two years we’ve seen periods of dramatic growth. To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today,” he further said and went on to add that he sees a huge opportunity going forward, but to ensure that the people and roles are aligned with those of the company they had launched a review process.

“The roles we’re eliminating reflect the outcome of that review. They cut across Alphabet, product areas, functions, levels and regions,” he added.

He further said that “These are important moments to sharpen our focus, re-engineer our cost base, and direct our talent and capital to our highest priorities. Being constrained in some areas allows us to bet big on others. Pivoting the company to be AI-first years ago led to ground-breaking advances across our businesses and the whole industry.”

This comes after Facebook’s parent company Meta had let go of 11,000 employees in November 2022. Several other global and Indian companies too have since announced layoffs in this funding winter.

Amazon also recently announced its decision to lay off more than 18,000 employees as global economic uncertainty forces companies to trim costs and restructure operations.