Google Offers Buyouts

Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) on Tuesday offered buyouts to employees across several of its divisions, including those within its knowledge and information and central engineering units as well as marketing, research and communications teams, according to media outlets. Knowledge and information, or K&I, is the unit that houses Google’s search, ads and commerce divisions. The buyouts Tuesday represent the company’s latest effort to reduce headcount, which Google has continued to do in waves since laying off 12,000 employees in 2023. It could not be confirmed how many employees were impacted by the latest round of buyouts. The Information reported earlier that the company offered buyouts to employees in the search and ads unit.The “voluntary exit program” applies to U.S.-based employees, and some teams are also mandating office returns for remote workers who live within 50 miles (80 kilometres) of an office, the company confirmed. They will be expected to assume a hybrid work schedule “in order to bring folks more together in-person.”“Earlier this year, some of our teams introduced a voluntary exit program with severance for U.S.-based Googlers, and several more are now offering the program to support our important work ahead,” Google spokesperson Courtenay Mencini wrote. Shares in the search engine behemoth opened Wednesday gained 34 cents to $178.94.