Tech giant Google has laid off 453 of its employees in India. The cuts were made across departments, and the employees were informed of their termination via email on Thursday, February 16. According to BusinessLine, the email was sent by Sanjay Gupta, Country Head and Vice President of Google India. Almost 190 employees were also laid off in Singapore, which was communicated by email.
On January 20, Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai had announced that the company has decided to reduce its workforce by around 12,000 roles. This was considered the largest layoff in Google in the past 25 years. Earlier, Microsoft had laid off 10,000 employees, Amazon had laid off 18,000 and Meta laid off 11,000 employees.
This comes even as over 250 Google employees staged a walk out in Zurich, Switzerland. Miffed with the company’s decision to fire the 12,000 employees. They staged a protest on Thursday after walking out from the building, holding up placards. They demanded that Google engage in dialogue with an employee committee as per Swiss law, and that support must be provided to foreign nationals whose residency depends on their employment, Bloomberg reported. Similar protests were also seen in other cities such as New York and California.