Google Canada starts layoffs as parent company cuts 12,000 workers globally

Google sent layoff notices on Monday to affected Canadian employees after its parent company Alphabet announced earlier this year it was cutting 12,000 of its global workforce.

Google Canada spokesperson Lauren Skelly said notifications had been sent to staff impacted by the cuts announced last month. It wasn’t immediately clear how many Canadian jobs were impacted.

Skelly said the company could not comment on specifics around the layoffs.

“Canada remains an important priority market for Google,” Skelly told Global News in an email.

Google, which has offices in Toronto, Kitchener-Waterloo, Ont., Vancouver, Ottawa, Montreal, and Edmonton, announced last month that it was laying off 12,000 workers, joining several tech companies trying to trim staff amid economic uncertainty.

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet, the parent company of Google, informed staff on Jan. 20 that cuts were coming.

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“Over the past two years we’ve seen periods of dramatic growth,” Pichai said.

“To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today.”

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He added that the layoffs reflected a “rigorous review” carried out by Google of its operations. The jobs being eliminated “cut across Alphabet, product areas, functions, levels and regions,” Pichai said, adding he was “deeply sorry” for the layoffs.

It’s one of the company’s largest rounds of layoffs and adds to tens of thousands of other job losses announced by Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook parent Meta, among others. In January, there were at least 48,000 job cuts announced by major companies in the tech sector.

The layoffs in the industry continued Monday. Dell Technologies Inc. announced it will eliminate about 6,650 jobs, or five per cent of its global workforce, as the PC maker grapples with falling demand and braces for economic uncertainty.

When asked about Canadian jobs, a spokesperson for Dell told Global News in an email the reduction will impact teams across the world, but did not have specific details to share.

“We have already started these conversations and the (layoff) dates vary based on local laws and regulations. We have nothing additional to add,” they said.

— with files from The Associated Press and Reuters