Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – Google has again laid off hundreds of its employees. This time, the employees who were laid off worked in Google's advertising sales team.
Google's move signals that the wave of layoffs at the tech giant will continue throughout 2024. According to Reuters, The wave of layoffs at technology companies comes as efforts to reduce employee workload through the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) software and automation.
Last week, Google employees working in the Voice Assistant division, Pixel cellphones, Nest smart devices and Fitbit smartwatches were laid off. The augmented reality technology development division was also laid off.
After laying off hundreds of people in the advertising sales division, Google said it would focus growth in the customer solutions unit which serves medium-level advertising clients.
Google is not the only technology giant that is still continuing its layoff policy that has been going on for the last 2 years. Amazon last week announced layoffs of hundreds of employees in its streaming and studio divisions. Around 500 employees at Twitch, an Amazon subsidiary that provides a video game streaming platform, were also laid off.
The series of layoff announcements from Google comes just a few weeks after the company, which is part of the parent company Alphabet, announced their most advanced AI model, called Gemini.
Google is now competing with Microsoft to become the company at the forefront of AI technology. Microsoft itself has spent billions of dollars on AI development, including through capital injections into OpenAI, the company that created ChatGPT.
Plans for major layoffs at Google have been announced since early 2023. In January 2023, Alphabet announced their plans to cut 12,000 positions, which is 6 percent of all their employees worldwide.
[Gambas:Video CNBC]
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