To finance AI work: Google also downsizes search and advertising teams

To spend more money on work on AI, Google has offered severance packages to more employees, including some in the important areas of internet search and online advertising. The Wall Street Journal reports this and explains that the planned job cuts will take place in parallel with investments amounting to tens of billions of US dollars that will be spent on AI development. In total, the company plans to spend 75 billion US dollars this year, almost 50 percent more than the 52.5 billion from the previous year. At the beginning of the year, severance packages were offered to employees working on Android, Chrome and Pixel devices.

“Cost discipline” for AI expenditure

In light of the severance offer in January, Google has already stated that the option of voluntary redundancy was an explicit request from many employees, which was honored. According to the Wall Street Journal, this is now being implemented in many teams “to support the important work that lies ahead”. According to the article, this involves AI development. A year ago, the CFO of Google's parent company Alphabet announced that spending on AI “and other growth areas” would have to be made possible through “cost discipline”.

Between 2019 and the end of 2022, the number of employees at Google worldwide grew enormously from around 119,000 to 187,000. The first major wave of redundancies followed in January 2023, when Google cut 12,000 jobs. This was followed by redundancies in Google's recruiting team in September 2023, and later the hardware division was affected. Since the beginning of 2024, the US company's management has also repeatedly stated that cuts are necessary to invest in high-priority areas. Google has recently integrated AI functions such as its chatbot Gemini into more and more products.

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(mho)