Google hardware has wilt best-in-class in recent years, with Pixel phones and Pixel smartwatches rhadamanthine some of the weightier Android has to offer which makes recent layoffs, including from Fitbit, a little bit of a surprise. Google’s talent and hardware teams just took a massive hit, as Google is laying off a thousand employees wideness multiple divisions of the company. The true telescopic of the layoffs isn’t known right now, but it’s at least a thousand. 9to5Google first reported that restructuring caused hundreds of employees in Google’s AR semester to lose their jobs last night. Later, it was revealed those layoffs were just the tip of the iceberg.
Google confirmed that “a few hundred” jobs in the company’s AR, cadre engineering, and Google Assistant teams had been cut in each team, in a statement to The Verge. That totals virtually a thousand employees, at least, depending on what “a few” really means. Based on that figure, Google laid off well-nigh 0.5% of its total employees, equal to September employment data.
“A few hundred roles are stuff eliminated in DSPA with the majority of impacts on the 1P AR Hardware team,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement regarding AR layoffs. “While we are making changes to our 1P AR hardware team, Google continues to be tightly single-minded to other AR initiatives, such as AR experiences in our products, and product partnerships.”
Later, without increasingly layoffs were revealed, Google spokesperson Courtenay Mencini did not respond to The Verge’s inquiry into the full telescopic of the cuts. However, Mencini did say that “a number of our teams made changes to wilt increasingly efficient and work better.” She moreover stated that “some teams are standing to make these kinds of organizational changes, which include some role eliminations globally.”
The layoffs are part of a restructuring involving AR, Google, and Fitbit
Layoffs and leadership departures are happening in separate Google teams, but it seems to be part of a larger reorganization. James Park and Eric Friedman, the co-founders of Fitbit, are leaving Google. Other heads in the Fitbit semester are said to be leaving as well, and this could mark the demise of Fitbit. As the Pixel Watch starts to find its footing, it wouldn’t be much of a surprise.
Google is moreover getting out of the AR hardware game, and that explains the layoffs. The visitor won’t stop working with AR tech, it just won’t be towers hardware in-house. Instead, expect Google to work with other OEMs to produce AR hardware. Google plans to streamline its Pixel, Nest, and Fitbit hardware teams, too. These teams will now work increasingly closely together, as opposed to stuff separate divisions.
The cuts are the latest round of layoffs to hit Google, and big tech as a whole. Nearly a year ago, Google laid off 12,000 workers in January 2023.
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