Google cuts 10% of executive staff in pursuit of ‘Googleyness’: report

New Delhi:

Google has laid off 10 percent of its executives as part of a long-running campaign to double its efficiency. Multiple news reports said CEO Sundar Pichai indicated in a full board meeting on Wednesday that there would be cuts to the positions of manager, director and vice president.

A Google spokesperson told Business Insider that some employees whose positions were eliminated will be “transitioned into individual employee roles,” while others will be “role eliminations.”

This news follows rapid developments in the world of artificial intelligence (AI) and high-profile competitors such as OpenAI, which has launched products that industry experts say may threaten Google Search, the online search business, which accounted for over 57 percent of its business revenue last year.

READ | Google presents its latest AI model: Gemini 2.0

Google responded by introducing generative AI capabilities across its products and launching Gemini 2.0 this month, its most advanced AI model to date. Mr Pichai said the new model would usher in “a new era of agents”, with AI models designed to understand and make decisions about the world.

The release sent Google shares up more than four percent on Wall Street, a day after the stock had already gained 3.5 percent following the release of a groundbreaking quantum chip.

The layoffs are the fourth this year, including cutting “a few hundred” jobs in its global advertising team in January and 100 more jobs in its cloud unit in June.

Google, which is part of Alphabet Inc., launched its efficiency offensive in September 2022.

By January of the next year, the company had cut over 12,000 jobs, or 6.4 percent of its global workforce. In an open letter to employees at the time, Mr. Pichai took “full responsibility for the decisions that got us here” but said the company needed to build on previous periods of dramatic growth.

The cuts, he said at the time, were preceded by a “rigorous” company-wide efficiency review that included a review of product areas, functions, levels and regions at Alphabet.

He also acknowledged that the company could have handled the layoffs better.

READ | “If we didn’t act…”: Sundar Pichai on why Google fired 12,000

“This is difficult for every company. At Google, we really haven’t had a moment like this in 25 years… (but) it became clear that if we hadn’t acted, things would have gotten worse.”…”

Meanwhile, in the same session, Mr. Pichai also spoke about a shift in corporate culture and the need to redefine their “Googleyness” – an amorphous term that has had many meanings over the years but is generally understood to express what Google is looking for searches for potential new hires.

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