What's happened
Alphabet to cut 12,000 jobs globally, which is about 6% of its workforce.
Why it matters
The layoffs reflect a different economic reality than the one the company had anticipated during a period of dramatic growth over the past two years. The move follows similar cuts by other tech giants, indicating that the tech sector is preparing for an economic downturn.
What the papers say
The sources all report on the same event, with some providing additional details such as the impact on UK and Ireland workers, and the fact that the recruitment division was also affected.
How we got here
During the height of the coronavirus pandemic, companies scrambled to meet demand as people went online for work, school, and entertainment, leading to a major hiring spree. However, the economic reality has since changed, leading to large-scale restructuring and job cuts across the tech sector.
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Pichai Sundararajan, known as Sundar Pichai, is an Indian-American business executive. He is the chief executive officer of Alphabet Inc. and its subsidiary Google LLC.
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Google LLC is an American multinational technology company that specializes in Internet-related services and products, which include online advertising technologies, a search engine, cloud computing, software, and hardware.
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Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology company with headquarters in Redmond, Washington. It develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services.
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An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written symbols or graphemes that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages.
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Alphabet Inc. is an American multinational conglomerate headquartered in Mountain View, California. It was created through a restructuring of Google on October 2, 2015, and became the parent company of Google and several former Google subsidiaries.
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