Google reported that it spent a total of $2.1 billion on redundancies last year. The money was spent on severance benefits and other expenses as the tech behemoth let off over 12,000 workers in 2023. Earlier last month, Google laid off over 1,000 employees and spent an additional $7 million paying them.
The amount was announced during the company’s fourth-quarter results announcement. While this may appear to be a large sum of money, Google reported growth in most of its main operations last year, producing a total of 86 billion dollars in the fourth quarter of 2023. This is an increase of 13 percent compared to the final quarter of 2022.
Google’s earnings report indicates consistent development in the digital advertising and cloud computing industries, with Google Search serving as the largest source of income. YouTube Premium, YouTube Music, and Google added $10.7 billion to the company’s income. Google’s cloud segment reported a 25% year-over-year rise in sales, totaling $9.19 billion.
Google also spent $1.8 billion last year to close offices due to layoffs. Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced the imminent release of Gemini Ultra, which developers are working on integrating into Google products beginning with Search.
