Key point 1: In order to improve efficiency, Google has reduced 10% of senior management positions, including managers, directors and vice presidents.
Key point 2: This efficiency improvement plan has been ongoing for more than two years, starting from the 20% efficiency improvement goal proposed by CEO Sundar Pichai in September 2022, and 12,000 efficiency improvements were carried out in January 2023. Mass layoffs of people.
Key point 3: This move is related to the launch of new products by AI competitors such as OpenAI that threaten Google's search business. Google is actively introducing generative AI functions into its core business, such as AI video generator and Gemini model.
According to Business Insider, two unnamed employees reported that Google CEO Pichai announced at an all-staff meeting on Wednesday that Google has made a series of changes in the past few years to simplify the company and improve efficiency. One of the important changes is the reduction of 10% of management positions, including managers, directors and vice presidents.
In response, a Google spokesperson said that some positions have been converted to non-management positions, while some have been eliminated completely.
Google's efficiency improvement program has been underway for more than two years. As early as September 2022, Pichai proposed the goal of improving Google's efficiency by 20%. The following January, the company conducted historic layoffs, eliminating a total of 12,000 positions.
And has the layoff plan from 2023 to now had any concrete results after nearly two years? According to the Q3 financial report released by Google's parent company Alphabet at the end of October, Alphabet's revenue increased by 15% year-on-year, a higher growth rate than the same period last year, and cloud revenue reached US$11.35 billion, an annual increase of nearly 35%. The company attributed the strong performance of the cloud to AI Products, including subscription services for enterprise customers.
Layoffs 12,000 people! Google is rushing to attack AI, but also has to deal with the crisis of separation
This wave of efficiency improvements also comes at a time when AI competitors such as OpenAI are constantly launching new products that threaten Google's search business. In the face of competition, Google responded proactively, introducing generative AI capabilities into its core business and launching a series of new AI capabilities, such as an AI video generator that beat OpenAI in early testing, and new AI features including "inference" models. Gemini model, which even shows the thought process.
Google has been making frequent moves recently. It just released Gemini 2.0 Flash on December 11, which outperforms the highest version of the previous generation, 1.5 Pro. Not only is it faster, but its performance has also been greatly upgraded. For example, 2.0 Flash scored a high score of 92.9 for its programming ability, while 1.5 Pro only scored 85.4 points in this category and was twice as fast.
But Google is also facing a crisis. After the United States and Europe successively determined that Google violated market monopoly, Google was also found to have violated market monopoly by regulatory agencies in Japan. The Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC) launched an investigation in October last year on the grounds that Google requires OEM manufacturers to pre-install its search application services in its mobile phones and excludes other third-party companies from providing application services. It is expected to require Google to stop operating in Japan. monopolistic behavior.
Google has also recently faced being deemed a market monopoly by regulatory agencies in the US and European markets. Among them, the United States is required to split up the Chrome browser business and must propose corresponding adjustments. Otherwise, further requirements for splitting up the Android business will not be ruled out.
Redefining "Googleyness": mission first
During Wednesday's meeting, Pichai also clarified the meaning of the term "Googleyness" and told employees that the term needs to be updated to fit the modern Google.
The term first appeared in 2015, and was proposed by Laszlo Bock, the then head of human operations at Google, in his book "Work Rules". In the book, he listed several Google characteristics that he considered, such as : "intellectual humility", "enjoying fun" and "comfort with ambiguity".
Pichai believes that the company's current definition of "Googleyness" is:
"Mission First",
"Make Helpful Things",
"Be Bold & Responsible",
"Stay Scrappy",
"Hustle & Have Fun".
However, a Google spokesperson did not respond to the employee's report.
Source: Business Insider, The Economic Times, MSN
