Just before the explosive first quarter earnings report on April 25th, Google CNBC revealed that it has laid off at least 200 employees from its “core” team as part of a reorganization that includes moving some roles to India and Mexico.
Google says its core division is responsible for building the technology foundation behind the company’s flagship products and protecting users’ online safety. Website. The core team includes the major technical departments of Information Technology, its team of Python developers, technical infrastructure, security foundations, app platforms, core developers, and various engineering roles.
At least 50 of the positions eliminated were in the engineering department at the company’s Sunnyvale, Calif., office, according to the filing. Many of the core teams will be hiring for corresponding roles in Mexico and India, according to internal documents seen by CNBC.
Google’s vice president of developer ecosystem Asim Hussain announced the news of the layoffs to his team in an email last week. He also spoke at a town hall and told employees this was the team’s largest planned reduction this year, according to internal documents.
“While maintaining our current global footprint, we intend to expand our high-growth global workforce to operate closer to our partners and developer community,” Hussain said in an email. I wrote it by email.
Alphabet has been cutting jobs since early last year, when it announced plans to cut about 12,000 jobs, or 6% of its workforce, in response to a downturn in the online advertising market. Despite a recent rebound in digital advertising, Alphabet continues to downsize, cutting jobs across multiple organizations this year.
Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat announced in mid-April that the company’s finance department would be restructured, with job cuts and positions relocated to Bangalore and Mexico City. Google’s head of search, Prabhakar Raghavan, told employees at an all-hands meeting in March that Google plans to build teams closer to users in key markets like India and Brazil, where labor costs are lower than in the United States. Told.
The job cuts come as the company enjoys its highest growth rate since early 2022, along with improved profit margins. Alphabet last week reported a 15% increase in first-quarter revenue from a year earlier, announced its first-ever dividend and $70 billion in stock buybacks.
“An announcement of this type may cause many people to feel anxious or frustrated,” Hussein wrote in an email to developers. He added that the message to developers is that this change “serves our broader goals” as a company.
The teams involved in the restructuring are key to the company’s developer tools, an area Google is streamlining to incorporate more artificial intelligence into its products. In February, Google announced a major change in the brand name of its chatbot from “Bard” to “Gemini.” This is the same name as the set of AI models that power chatbots.
Alphabet is gearing up for its annual developer conference, Google I/O, on May 14th. At Google I/O, the company traditionally announces new developer products and tools that have been in development over the previous year. In a memo explaining the developer’s changes, Hussein said generative AI is at a “tipping point.”
“Recent advances in generative AI across the industry, including Google’s Gemini, are changing the very nature of software development as we know it,” Hussain wrote.
Pankaj Rohatgi, Google’s vice president of security engineering, told the team in a separate email: “To optimize our business objectives, we are expanding our work to other locations, and as a result, some roles will be will be removed and the role will be proposed for deletion.”
The core job cuts also include the Governance and Protection Data group, which is central to the regulatory challenges the company faces, especially as lawmakers around the world focus on developing AI. The European Union’s Digital Markets Act, which came into force in March, aims to crack down on anti-competitive behavior in the technology industry.
Evan Kotsovinos, Google’s vice president of governance and data protection, teased the upcoming changes last week.
Kotsovinos said in an email that the team’s success means responding to “increasing regulation” and is contingent on “moving faster.”
Raghavan, Google’s senior vice president of search, recently cited increased competition, a tougher regulatory environment and slower organic growth as the company’s “new operating realities.”
Google confirmed the core restructuring and layoffs when asked for comment, and a spokesperson told CNBC that employees will be able to apply for open positions within Google and access outplacement services. .
“As we have said, we are investing responsibly in our top priorities and the important opportunities ahead,” a spokesperson said in an email. “Many of our teams have made changes to be more efficient and work better, remove layers and align resources to the product’s biggest priorities.”