Google announced on Friday that it will lay off 12,000 people from its workforce. Indirectly, Google is now included in a number of U.S. technology companies. which participated in the reduction of workers amid fears of an economic recession.
Sundar Pichai, Google's CEO, said in an email sent to company employees on Friday that the firm would begin making layoffs in the U.S. immediately. In other countries, the process "will take longer due to local laws and practices," he said.
Tech companies are facing a number of challenges at the moment, not the least of which is rising interest rates and inflation over the past year that have hurt tech stocks and forced advertisers to cut back on online ad spending.
An increase in interest rates from the U.S. Federal Reserve. in particular has caused investor appetite for American technology stocks to decline. The gloomy macroeconomic climate has put pressure on those companies to reduce their workforce.
On Wednesday, Amazon began a new wave of job cuts affecting more than 18,000 people. On the same day, Microsoft announced plans to lay off 10,000 workers.
Twitter, under the leadership of Elon Musk, has also made layoffs, cutting the company's workforce in half since taking over as CEO late last year.
