Does Microsoft incentivize layoffs at Google?

12 January 20244 months ago babelfish

Google is firing hundreds of employees to return to focusing on online search: competition from Microsoft (which uses AI) is becoming fierce

To reduce its costs, Google is laying off hundreds of employees, particularly in the teams dedicated to the development of the Assistant voice assistant, components for augmented reality and design.

IS GOOGLE AFRAID OF MICROSOFT?

The cuts are due to the increase in competition from Microsoft and OpenAI in Google's core business , i.e. search engines: it is precisely in this field, it seems, that the Alphabet group company will reinvest the resources freed up with the layoffs, with the objective of safeguarding one's lead. In a statement, Google spoke of the need to "align [the] resources to […] the major product priorities".

Microsoft is enhancing its Bing search engine and its Edge browser with artificial intelligence to – this is the company's explanation – “provide better search, more complete answers, a new chat experience and the ability to generate content. We think of these tools as an AI co-pilot for the web.” Edge, for example, has been equipped with a new sidebar to assist in composing texts and comparing financial data.

CHANGE OF COMMUNICATION

In truth, Alphabet has already made it known since January 2023 that it would reduce its workforce by 12,000 units, more than 6 percent of the total: the layoffs were concentrated in the teams dedicated to recruiting , news and Waze, the road navigation application. At the time – according to Bloomberg sources – the cuts were communicated directly by the CEO, Sundar Pichai, while today by lower level managers.

AMAZON ALSO LICENSES

Google isn't the only tech company making layoffs. Even Amazon, just this week, eliminated hundreds of jobs in its Prime Video (the video on demand streaming service) and Studios (the film production and distribution company) divisions.

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/google-licenziamenti-assistant-realta-aumentata/ on Fri, 12 Jan 2024 07:16:10 +0000.