The Pixel9a has just been tested by the press on Thursday, April 10, 2025. It has enjoyed fairly unanimous critical success. We ourselves have noted 8/10, an excellent score for a mid-range smartphone.
The very next day, Friday, April 11, 2025, we learned through the media The Information (via Reuters) that part of the Pixel division was affected by a wave of layoffs. Hundreds of employees have reportedly been let go in the division responsible not only for Pixel, but also for much more mainstream products, such as Android and Chrome.
In January 2025, the Mountain View firm proposed a voluntary departure plan. Here is the implementation.
"Becoming more agile and operating more efficiently"
In a press release sent to The Information, the company confirmed the layoffs in these terms:
"Since combining the Platforms and Devices teams last year, we have worked to become more agile and operate more efficiently, which has involved job cuts in addition to the voluntary departure program we offered in January."
The combination of the Platforms and Devices teams refers to the creation of a new division in April 2024. This includes services like Android, Chrome, ChromeOS, but also subscriptions to Google Photos and Google One, as well as physical devices: Pixel, Fitbit, and Nest.
Any horizontal merger, bringing together two services of the same level, generally results in a wave of layoffs. Indeed, from the management's point of view, some jobs have probably been duplicated and the company will not have decided to reclassify these jobs. It is also possible that this is an internal reorganization into new units, leaving some employees behind.
Little impact on users at At this stage
As for consumers, reading between the lines, Google doesn't seem particularly determined to change its ambitions for any particular product. Pixel buyers and Chrome and Android users shouldn't be impacted. At least, we don't have any evidence at this stage that would suggest so.
In January 2023, Alphabet, Google's parent company, laid off 12,000 people, representing 6% of its payroll. By January 2024, Google had already laid off hundreds of employees dedicated to the sale of online ads. The company had been heavily criticized for the brutality of the maneuver. Its proposal of voluntary departures in January is undoubtedly aimed at trying to respond to these criticisms.
According to the site layoffs.fyi, which has been tracking layoffs in the tech sector since 2022, this year has already seen the departure of 27,762 people in the sector. A significant number, but down from previous years, with 2023 and 2024 having been respectively marked by nearly 200,000 and nearly 238,000 layoffs.
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