Google slashes 40-45 jobs in its news division: Report

SAN FRANSISCO: Google has slashed dozens of jobs in its news division amid slowed growth and uncertain economic conditions, the media reported.

At least 40-45 workers in Google News have lost their jobs, according to an Alphabet Workers Union spokesperson, CNBC reported late on Wednesday.

“We’re deeply committed to a vibrant information ecosystem, and news is a part of that long-term investment,” a company spokesperson was quoted as saying in the report.

“We’ve made some internal changes to streamline our organisation. A small number of employees were impacted. We’re supporting everyone with a transition period, outplacement services and severance as they look for new opportunities at Google and beyond,” said the company.

Google News division still employs hundreds of people. Google News presents links to articles from thousands of publishers and magazines. “These are some of the best and brightest people I’ve ever worked with. We’re definitely worse off without them,” wrote a staff engineer at Google News on LinkedIn regarding the layoffs.

In January, Google announced it was reducing 12,000 jobs, affecting around 6 per cent of the full-time workforce. Last month, the company eliminated hundreds of positions from its recruiting organisation.

The tech giant said in a statement that the “volume of requests for our recruiters has gone down”.

Google, however, declined to reveal the exact number of people being asked to go from its recruiting workforce, reports Semafor. “In order to continue our important work to ensure we operate efficiently, we’ve made the hard decision to reduce the size of our recruiting team,” a company spokesperson was quoted as saying in the report.

“We’re supporting everyone impacted with a transition period, outplacement services, and severance as they look for new opportunities here at Google and beyond,” the spokesperson added. Google slowed down the pace of hiring last year amid the global economic slowdown.