Google’s parent firm Alphabet has said it will cut about 12,000 jobs worldwide, becoming the latest player in the technology industry to significantly reduce its workforce.
The news was revealed in an email to Google employees that was later shared in a company blog post.
The job cuts represent about 6 per cent of the group's global workforce and will affect "roles across product areas, functions, levels and regions", according to Sundar Pichai, Alphabet's CEO.
Similarly to the leaders of Amazon and Microsoft, Pichai cited a changing "economic reality" as the reason for the layoffs. The explanation made a veiled reference to the looming global recession and the changes in consumer behaviour following the Covid-19 pandemic.
"Over the past two years we’ve seen periods of dramatic growth," he wrote. "To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today."
Pichai...