Google fired a disproportionate number of people at various departments in its round of layoffs announced last week. Many layoffs are being made at Fuchsia’s own operating system and at Area 120, among others.
At Fuchsia, 16 percent of the 400 employees have to leave, reports The New York Times. Fuchsia is considered a future operating system for devices and it is already running, for example on Nest Hub Max. Google released the Nest Hub Max with Android Things, a special, stripped-down version of Android for internet-of-things devices. Fuchsia was not developed around a Linux kernel, but around the Zircon kernel developed by Google itself. Google wants to use the software as a general-purpose OS with a focus on security, updates and performance for different devices.
Relatively speaking, there are still many more layoffs at incubator Area 120, Bloomberg reports. Three of the projects will go to Google, the rest will stop and all employees will have to leave. It is unclear how many projects and how many people are involved, but that is in any case a majority. The Area 120 site currently lists six projects. Area 120 will stop in the course of this year.
Google is going to lay off 12,000 people, turned out Friday. Among other things, Google has to deal with a downturn in the field of digital advertising, from which almost all of the company’s income comes. Alphabet is certainly not the only major tech company that is going to make a round of layoffs. For example, Microsoft recently announced that 10,000 jobs will be cut, which amounts to less than 5 percent of the total workforce, according to the company. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said recently in an interview all that the tech sector is facing ‘two difficult years’. Also Amazon plans to cut staff here 18,000 employees will lose their jobs. Facebook parent company Meta already announced last year that 11,000 jobs will be cut.
