Google laid off greater than 12,000 staff in 2023 and spent $2.1 billion on severance and different bills. And the price of layoffs retains piling up: Within the month to this point in 2024, the corporate has spent $700 million on worker severance packages as a part of layoffs concentrating on greater than 1,000 extra positions. Google mum or dad firm Alphabet disclosed the determine when it launched its fourth-quarter earnings on Tuesday.
Regardless of the layoffs, Google ended 2023 with development in most of its core enterprise strains. Google introduced income of US$86 billion within the fourth quarter of 2023, an annual enhance of 13%. The search large’s core digital promoting and cloud computing companies are additionally exhibiting regular development, which Chief Government Sundar Pichai attributes to Google’s investments in producing synthetic intelligence.
Workplace closures additionally value Google
Google’s most important income is its search engine enterprise, which generated $48 billion in income, a rise of practically 13% over the identical interval final 12 months. Pichai mentioned the corporate’s subscription providers and gadgets section generated $10.7 billion in income, primarily attributable to subscriptions to YouTube Premium and Music, YouTube TV and Google One. YouTube’s promoting income was $9.2 billion, up 15% from final 12 months.
In a convention name with buyers, Pichai referred to as 2024 Alphabet’s “Gemini Age,” referring to the corporate’s synthetic intelligence language mannequin that’s anticipated to be utilized to all of Google’s core merchandise. “Gemini is the primary to understand the imaginative and prescient we had once we based Google DeepMind, bringing collectively two of our world-class analysis groups,” Pichai mentioned. Gemini Extremely seems, an up to date model of the unique mannequin that the corporate remains to be growing . “Gemini Extremely is coming quickly. The workforce is already engaged on the following model and bringing it into our merchandise, beginning with Search.”
Google is presently the world’s third-largest cloud supplier, behind Microsoft’s Azure and AWS. However the cloud unit gained momentum final 12 months. The corporate reported Google Cloud income of $9.19 billion, a major enhance of 25.6% from the identical interval final 12 months.
Whereas the layoffs have taken a substantial toll on Google, so too have the true property cuts (together with in locations just like the dear Bay Space) ensuing from the layoffs. The closure of bodily workplace area will trigger Google to lose a complete of $1.8 billion in 2023.
Google’s continued funding in synthetic intelligence, or its “Gemini period,” means extra layoffs in 2024 as the corporate makes cuts in different divisions to compensate.