YouTube has struggled to fully recover from an advertising slowdown in the past year and has contended with strong competition from TikTok, the short-video service popular with younger users.
Google has been looking for more than a year for ways to cut costs and trim bureaucracy. Last Thursday, the company eliminated more than a thousand jobs from its core engineering division; its voice-operated product, Google Assistant; and some projects involving augmented reality, the technology that combines the real world with a digital overlay.
“We’re responsibly investing in our company’s biggest priorities and the significant opportunities ahead,” Andrea Faville, YouTube’s head of corporate communications, said in a statement. Various Google teams conducted layoffs and reorganizations in the second half of 2023, and “some teams are continuing to make these kinds of organizational changes, which include some role eliminations globally.”
The company reported that it had more than 182,000 employees at the end of September, a figure that ballooned from 119,000 in December 2019. One year ago, Google began the process of shedding about 6 percent of its work force, or 12,000 people.
Now an employer that had become known for its cushy amenities resembles many of its Silicon Valley peers.