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(Boursier.com) — Alphabet layoffs in turn massively! The parent company of Google and YouTube plans to cut 12,000 jobs worldwide, more than 6% of its total workforce. Group Chief Executive Sundar Pichai said he took “full responsibility for the decisions that got us this far”, in an email to employees also shared as a blog post on the company’s website. business today. These cuts follow a rigorous review of all product areas and functions “to ensure that our people and our roles are aligned with our highest priorities as a company,” in Pichai’s words. The layoffs will impact various segments, roles and regions.
After the massive plans of Meta (Facebook), Microsoft, Salesforce.com, Twitter and Amazon, so it’s Google’s turn to decide on the workforce. “These are important times to sharpen our focus, reorganize our cost base and direct our talent and capital to our most important priorities,” Pichai added.
US tech giants previously boosted hiring in the first two years of the pandemic amid strong demand for digital services. Many have since admitted that these hiring levels do not correspond to the current economic reality, in the midst of a downturn.
Alphabet is facing increased competition, with the rise of new players, including the Chinese TikTok and more recently an emerging player that everyone is talking about, the conversational robot ChatGPT. Pichai, explaining this painful decision to decide on the group’s workforce, evokes “a difficult economic cycle”. Recall that Google experienced a fairly severe slowdown in search activity, with Google Search revenue up slightly by 4.2% in the third quarter to $39.5 billion, growth which was then less than half the market consensus. .
Alphabet’s chief executive believes that these actions will help the company focus on more promising segments such as artificial intelligence, which represents “a substantial opportunity”. It does not exclude “big bets” in certain areas, despite this global austerity cure. The pivot made a few years ago by Alphabet towards AI would have allowed significant breakthroughs.
The reaction of Wall Street is for the moment positive vis-a-vis these announcements, since the title Alphabet is expected to rise 3.7% pre-session at $96. Over one year, the Californian group’s market valuation has collapsed by 30%. Since all-time highs in November 2021, the stock has plunged more than 37%.