It is "needless" for
Google to cut hundreds of jobs when the tech giant earns billions, a union has
claimed.
Jobs are going on teams working on
health tracker Fitbit, the voice-controlled Google Assistant and hardware such
as augmented reality.
The exact number of job losses is
unclear, although Google confirmed to the Verge it had closed "a few
hundred" roles across several of its teams.
Google said it was "responsibly
investing" in its biggest priorities.
But in a post on X, formerly Twitter, the Alphabet Workers Union said
the job cuts were not necessary, and it would fight them.
"Our members and teammates work
hard every day to build great products for our users, and the company cannot
continue to fire our coworkers while making billions every quarter," it
wrote.
However, Google has defended the
latest round of redundancies.
"Throughout the 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," the tech giant told the BBC in a
statement.
"Some teams are continuing to
make these kinds of organizational changes, which include some role
eliminations globally.
We're continuing to support any
impacted employees as they look for new roles here at Google and
beyond."
The firm made $76.3bn (£59.9bn) in
revenue in the third quarter of 2023, according to its most recent figures,
with a net income of $19.7bn.
Google purchased Fitbit for $2.1bn
in 2019 at a time when many tech businesses were expanding into other
areas.
But now it has slashed jobs in the
team - with Fitbit co-founders James Park and Eric Friedman among those leaving
the firm, according to multiple reports.
Other major job cuts have come in
the team working on Google Assistant, a voice-controlled technology similar to
Amazon's Alexa. These job losses are
again understood to be measured in the hundreds.
It comes a few months after Google
announced in a blog post that its artificial intelligence tool Bard would be
powering future forms of Assistant.
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