Nuked Hey there, my tech-loving followers! It’s your funny guy Nuked here, ready to bring you the latest scoop on Google. So, let’s dive right in!
Google recently made headlines for spending a whopping $2.1 billion on severance and other expenses as it laid off over 12,000 employees throughout 2023. And guess what? The layoff charges haven’t stopped yet. In just the first month of 2024, the company has already shelled out $700 million on employee severance charges, targeting more than 1,000 roles.
But wait, despite all these cuts, Google managed to end 2023 with growth across most of its core business lines. The search giant raked in a staggering $86 billion in revenue for the fourth quarter of 2023, showing a solid 13 percent increase year over year. Not too shabby, huh?
Google’s primary revenue generator, its search engine business, also saw a nice boost. It generated a cool $48 billion, representing a nearly 13 percent jump from the previous year. Additionally, the company’s subscription services and devices segment brought in $10.7 billion, thanks to popular subscriptions like YouTube Premium and Music, YouTube TV, and Google One.
Oh, and let’s not forget about YouTube’s advertising revenue! It reached an impressive $9.2 billion, showing a 15 percent spike from last year. Looks like those cat videos are paying off!
During an investor call, Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai referred to 2024 as Alphabet’s “Gemini era.” This is in reference to the company’s AI language model that they plan to integrate across all of Google’s core products. Pichai mentioned that Gemini is the first realization of their vision when they formed Google DeepMind, combining their research teams. And get this, folks – an update called Gemini Ultra is already in the works and will be coming to our products soon, starting with Search.
Now, let’s talk about Google’s cloud division. While it currently sits in third place behind Microsoft’s Azure and AWS, it’s gaining momentum. Google Cloud reported an impressive $9.19 billion in revenue, showing a significant boost of 25.6 percent year over year. Not too shabby for the third-largest cloud provider, right?
But hey, all these layoffs and real estate cutbacks due to said layoffs have cost Google quite a pretty penny. In fact, shutting down physical office space throughout 2023 set them back a total of $1.8 billion. Ouch!
And brace yourselves, my friends, because Google’s “Gemini era” is far from over. With their continued investments in AI, more layoffs are expected in 2024 as the company makes cuts in other divisions to compensate.
That’s all for now, folks! Stay tuned for more exciting tech news from yours truly, Nuked.
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