Google lays off “hundreds” more employees, strips Google Assistant features

Google's cost-cutters are still working overtime, with more layoffs this week and cuts to Google Assistant functionality.

First up, The New York Times reports Google laid off "hundreds" of workers in "several divisions" on Wednesday. Core engineering, the Google Assistant, and the hardware division all lost people. The report says that "Google said that most of the hardware cuts affected a team working on augmented reality." AR cuts are eyebrow-raising since that's quickly going to be one of the highest-profile teams at the company this year, as Google, Samsung, and Qualcomm team up to battle the Apple Vision Pro. FitBit was apparently also a big loser, with 9to5Google reporting that Fitbit co-founders James Park and Eric Friedman and "other Fitbit leaders" have left Google.

Over the years, Google has rarely laid off workers, but since January of last year, a new focus on cost-cutting has made layoffs a regular occurrence at Google. The purge started with an announcement of 12,000 layoffs in January, which took until at least March to complete. Then there were more layoffs at Alphabet companies Waymo and Everyday Robots in March, Waze layoffs in June, recruiting layoffs in September, Google News cuts in October, and now these layoffs in January. There are rumors of more layoffs happening this month, too, focusing on the ad sales division.