On Friday, January 20, 2023, Alphabet announced the elimination of 6% of these workforces worldwide. This corresponds to 12,000 jobs. After years of growth, CEO Sundar Pichai is forced to downsize his workforce. Yet Google is the company that has avoided a social plan the longest. Faced with a lower-than-expected profit and a slowdown in digital advertising, the company had to give in.
Dismissal with multiple speeds
In September 2022, there were 187,000 employees worldwide at Alphabet. Today, only American employees have ever been notified of their termination. The procedure will be slightly longer in other countries, depending on local labor laws. Employees who have already been notified will receive one compensation of 16 weeks’ salary, paid vacation, the 2022 bonus and 6 months of health coverage. Foreign employees who wish to remain on US soil will also receive assistance with legal procedures.
Google, like many large groups (Amazon, Twitter, WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook), has significantly reduced their activities and their workforce. The Microsoft company is not spared either, last Wednesday the computer group announced the dismissal of 10,000 employees before the end of March. With this announcement, it is nothing less than 216,000 employees in the sector who lost their jobs since the beginning of 2022.
and several lawsuits
4 days after this announcement, it is the turn of the US Department of Justice to issue a statement. The institution is suing the Mountain View giant for abuse of a dominant position. A new unprecedented showdown threatens. 8 US states and the Department of Justice have filed a complaint against the giant Google. The latter wants a conviction for violating competition law in the online advertising market, make him pay a record fine and, above all, try to stop certain activities related to the sale of online advertising space. Indeed, the Californian group is accused of foreclosing its rivals by monopolizing “systematically a wide range of high-tech tools used by publishers, advertisers and other market players”.
These are not the first antitrust cases Google has faced. A sentence has already been handed down in France in 2021 for abuse of a dominant position in advertising. A fine of 220 million euros had been requested and the giant had undertaken to change its practices. In the United States, in December 2020, a complaint was filed for the dominance of the search engine. The trial is expected to begin later this year.