Alphabet Inc.’s Google has said that the company is laying off hundreds of people working on its voice-activated Google Assistant software and is eliminating a similar number of roles in the company's Devices and Services team, Reuters has reported.
Among the affected workers are those working on the voice-based Google Assistant and at the augmented reality hardware team. Workers in the company’s central engineering organization were also hit by the cuts, the company said as reported by Bloomberg.
As per Reuters report, the layoffs at Google Assistant, first reported by news platform Semafor, are part of organizational changes that have been in place since the second-half of 2023, which included layoffs at the company's mapping app Waze.
A few hundred roles are being eliminated in the company's Devices and Services team, with the majority in the 1P AR hardware team, the company said, confirming a report by tech media website 9to5Google, which first reported the reorganization.
"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 spokesperson told Reuters in a statement. As of September 2023, Alphabet had 182,381 employees across the world.
In another news, Videogame software provider Unity Software will lay off approximately 25 percent of its workforce, or 1,800 jobs, the company said in a regulatory filing.
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