Google fires Brazilians amid global cutbacks of 12,000 employees

Brazilian Google employees announce on social networks that they received notice of dismissal from big tech this Friday (10). The company’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, had reported a global cut of 12,000 workers on the 20th.

Among those fired are employees who held management positions. Areas affected were financial products, YouTube, marketing and advertising. Sought, Google Brazil confirmed that the layoffs were notified this Friday, but did not respond to the number of posts cut.

According to big tech, the Brazilian operation has more than a thousand employees.

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said in a statement to staff in January that the company has reassessed its products, people and priorities, which has led to job cuts across different geographies and products.

The workforce expanded rapidly in the face of better times, but now the company faces “a different economic reality,” Pichai said at the time.

Google has concentrated efforts in the area of ​​generative artificial intelligence and, this Monday (6) announced that it will open public tests of its own technology to compete with ChatGPT, the Bard robot. In the AI’s first performance, Google’s intelligent chatbot made a mistake, which sent the company’s stock down 8% that day.

Alphabet, the holding company that owns Google, has reduced its headcount as the company faces a threat to its long-held position at the top of the tech industry. Microsoft has entered into a partnership with the startup that created ChatGPT to enhance its tools with artificial intelligence resources.

The mass cuts of recent months, however, affect large technology companies in general. Microsoft plans to lay off 10,000 employees. Amazon also announced on January 4 that the number of layoffs at the company will exceed 18,000. Meta, which owns Facebook, dismissed 11,000 people last year.