According to Cointelegraph: Google's CEO, Sundar Pichai, has unveiled an internal restructure plan that points towards job cuts in 2024 to fund its “ambitious goals” in sectors primarily including artificial intelligence (AI). A memo named “2024 priorities and the year ahead,” released by Pichai on January 17 and reported by The Verge and CNBC, confirmed the strategy.
To make capacity for substantial investments in priority areas, Google admits it has to “make tough choices.” Resultantly, these choices will involve, for some teams, eliminating roles and “removing layers to simplify execution and drive velocity." However, it was clarified this reshuffling would not affect every team, and the scale of layoffs would be smaller than the previous year.
Pichai also noted that resource allocation decisions would be made by certain teams. Last year, Alphabet, Google's parent company, announced a 6% global workforce cut in January 2023. By September of the same year, it had laid off 182,381 employees worldwide.
One of the tech giant's key investment focuses for 2024 is AI, with more detailed goals set to be announced later in the week.
In December 2023, Google introduced its most advanced model, Gemini, deemed a competitor for OpenAI's dominant ChatGPT-4. Initial reception of Gemini was somewhat mixed, however, with users voicing concerns over misrepresented capabilities in its promotional video. Google responded, attribiting any misconceptions to brevity in promotional content.
Following this, Google lowered Gemini's pro version prices and expressed its plans to offer more developer-friendly tools, aligning with ChatGPT’s feature that enables premium users to develop personalized GPTs.