"Google parent Alphabet slashes jobs, pushing tech layoffs over 200,000", 20 January 2023

Google’s parent company Alphabet is cutting the most jobs in its history, showing that its massive investments in artificial intelligence haven’t offset the pullback in advertising and tech spending that has triggered a parade of tech companies to announce mass layoffs in recent months.

…Sundar Pichai, the company’s chief executive, informed staff that it was cutting 12,000 jobs. He said the cuts — estimated at 6 percent of the workforce — span the company’s product areas and regions, and that the decision followed a companywide review.

...The cuts, by far the largest in Google’s 25-year history, are the latest in an industry that has shed more than 200,000 workers last year and so far this year

“Today, 12,000 of our co-workers woke up to devastating news. In one email Sundar Pichai has taken away the livelihoods of thousands of workers,” said Parul Koul, executive chair of the Alphabet Workers Union, a group that represents both full-time employees and Google contractors. “This is egregious and unacceptable behavior by a company that made $17 billion dollars in profit last quarter alone.”