Google offers buyouts to more workers amid AI-driven tech upheaval and antitrust uncertainty

Google has offered buyouts to another swath of its workforce across several key divisions in a fresh round of cost cutting coming ahead of a court decision that could order a breakup of its internet empire. The Mountain View, California, company confirmed the streamlining that was reported by several news outlets.

It's not clear how many employees are affected, but the offers were made to staff in Google's search, advertising, research and engineering units, according to The Wall Street Journal. Google employs most of the nearly 186,000 workers on the worldwide payroll of its parent company, Alphabet Inc.

"Earlier this year, some of our teams introduced a voluntary exit program with severance for US-based Googlers, and several more are now offering the program to support our important work ahead," a Google spokesperson, Courtenay Mencini, said in a statement.

"A number of teams are also asking remote employees who live near an office to return to a hybrid work schedule in order to bring folks more together in-person," Mencini said.

Google is offering the buyouts while awaiting for a federal judge to determine its fate after its ubiquitous search engine was declared an illegal monopoly as part of nearly 5-year-old case by the US Justice Department. The company is also awaiting remedy action in another antitrust case involving its digital ad network.

US District Judge Amit Mehta is weighing a government proposal seeking to ban Google paying more than $26 billon annually to Apple and other technology companies to lock in its search engine as the go-to place for online information, require it to share data with rivals and force a sale of its popular Chrome browser. The judge is expected to rule before Labor Day, clearing the way for Google to pursue its plan to appeal last year's decision that labeled its search engine as a monopoly.

The proposed dismantling coincides with ongoing efforts by the Justice Department to force Google to part with some of the technology powering the company's digital ad network after a federal judge ruled that its digital ad network has been improperly abusing its market power to stifle competition to the detriment of online publishers.

Like several of its peers in Big Tech, Google has been periodically reducing its headcount since 2023 as the industry began to backtrack from the hiring spree that was triggered during pandemic lockdowns that spurred feverish demand for digital services.

Google began its post-pandemic retrenchment by laying off 12,000 workers in early 2023 and since then as been trimming some divisions to help bolster its profits while ramping up its spending on artificial intelligence — a technology driving an upheaval that is starting to transform its search engine into a more conversational answer engine.