MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Google announced on Wednesday that it is planning to lay off a “significant” number of employees and will relocate some workers overseas.
A spokesperson for Google, based in Mountain View, California, told the San Francisco Chronicle that the layoffs will primarily affect the company’s finance and real estate departments. They added that the moves were part of a continuing restructuring of the company, and that some impacted jobs will be moved to developing hubs in India, Ireland and Mexico.
“As we’ve said, we’re responsibly investing in our company’s biggest priorities and the significant opportunities ahead,” the spokesperson said in a statement to the Chronicle and other media outlets. “To best position us for these opportunities, throughout the second half of 2023 and into 2024, a number of our teams made changes to become more efficient and work better, remove layers and align their resources to their biggest product priorities.”
The latest layoffs come after job cuts at Google in January, Reuters reported. The tech giant laid off approximately 1,000 employees, according to KRON-TV.
According to Business Insider, the finance teams affected include Google’s treasury, business services and revenue cash operations. According to the news outlet, Ruth Porat, Google’s head of finance, told employees in an email that the restructuring would expand operations to Bangalore, India; Mexico City; and Dublin.
Google spent $1.8 billion in 2023 toward downsizing its real estate obligations, the Chronicle reported. The increase in remote workers lessened the need for offices, and Google earmarked 1.4 million square feet of office space for subleasing, according to the newspaper. A large project in San Jose, California, has also been temporarily shelved.
Google has been cutting staff and reorganizing departments since 2023 as it attempts to trim costs and move faster in areas such as artificial intelligence, Business Insider reported.