What does Google's mass layoffs mean for tech industry?

Google fired hundreds of workers from its engineering, hardware, and voice assistance divisions as part of cost-cutting efforts.

According to a statement from the firm, Google is making these reductions in order to "responsibly invest in our company's biggest priorities and the significant opportunities ahead," reported AP.

“Some teams are continuing to make these kinds of organisational changes, which include some role eliminations globally,” it said.

A few hundred jobs would be eliminated, according to a statement made by Google previously, primarily affecting its augmented reality hardware team.

The layoffs come after Alphabet, the parent company of Google, and its leadership promised to slash expenses. Google announced a year ago that it would lay off 12,000 workers, or around 6% of its total staff.

The Alphabet Workers Union referred to the job cuts as "another round of needless layoffs" in a post on X, the former name of Twitter.

“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,” the union wrote. “We won’t stop fighting until our jobs are safe!”

Google is hardly the only tech company making cost reductions. To reassure investors, Facebook's parent company, Meta, has cut almost 20,000 workers in the last year. In 2023, Meta's stock price increased by almost 178%.