Google’s billions make job cuts ‘pointless’ – union

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It is “needless” for Google to chop tons of of jobs when the tech big earns billions, a union has claimed.

Jobs are happening groups engaged on well being tracker Fitbit, the voice-controlled Google Assistant and {hardware} corresponding to augmented actuality.

The precise variety of job losses is unclear, though Google confirmed to the Verge it had closed “a few hundred” roles throughout a number of of its groups.

Google stated it was “responsibly investing” in its greatest priorities.

But in a submit on X, previously Twitter, the Alphabet Workers Union stated the job cuts weren’t vital, and it will combat them.

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“Our members and teammates work hard every day to build great products for our users, and the company cannot continue to fire our coworkers while making billions every quarter,” it wrote.

However, Google has defended the most recent spherical of redundancies.

“Throughout the second half of 2023, a number of our teams made changes to become more efficient and work better, and to align their resources to their biggest product priorities,” the tech big instructed the BBC in a press release.

“Some teams are continuing to make these kinds of organizational changes, which include some role eliminations globally. We’re continuing to support any impacted employees as they look for new roles here at Google and beyond.”

The agency made $76.3bn (£59.9bn) in income within the third quarter of 2023, based on its most up-to-date figures, with a web revenue of $19.7bn.

Fitbit and Voice

Google bought Fitbit for $2.1bn in 2019 at a time when many tech companies had been increasing into different areas.

But now it has slashed jobs within the staff – with Fitbit co-founders James Park and Eric Friedman amongst these leaving the agency, based on a number of stories.

Other main job cuts have come within the staff engaged on Google Assistant, a voice-controlled know-how just like Amazon’s Alexa.

These job losses are once more understood to be measured within the tons of.

It comes a number of months after Google introduced in a weblog submit that its synthetic intelligence instrument Bard could be powering future types of Assistant.