Google is going to lay off Assistant, hardware and engineering employees to reduce corporate expenses.
The round of layoffs will affect hundreds of employees in the Google Assistant division. Jobs are also disappearing within the teams for the Pixel phone, Nest smart home devices, Fitbit trackers and Augmented Reality devices. The AR team is being hit hardest within the hardware divisions. Google’s central engineering team is also being cut.
“Throughout 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. Some teams are continuing to make these kinds of organizational changes, which include some role eliminations globally,” Google explained.
Exact numbers regarding the layoffs in each department are unknown, making it difficult to determine how hard each division is being hit percentage-wise. Although Google is also reducing overlapping functions of hardware divisions in this way, it may give insight into Google’s priorities regarding devices and Assistant.
With the layoffs, Fitbit founders James Park and Eric Friedman are also leaving Google. The fitness tracker maker was acquired by Google in 202.
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