Google Taiwan to cut 180 jobs due to global downsizing

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Google Taiwan is reducing its workforce in the local market after Alphabet Inc, the parent company of the US search engine, announced in January it would lay off 6% of its employees globally as the international tech industry faces market uncertainty.

Google Taiwan began scaling back its local workforce on Wednesday and more than 180 workers in the country were reportedly affected, Chinese-language media reported.

Google Taiwan would stay on track with its global workforce reduction plan and operations in Taiwan would make corresponding adjustments that would comply with local labor regulations, the company said in a statement on Friday.

Photo: REUTERS

The company would provide as much assistance as possible to affected employees, including extended employee benefits and other support programs, he said.

Google’s Asia-Pacific operations had completed workforce reductions by the end of last month, it said.

Taiwan is Google’s largest hardware research and development base outside of the company’s US headquarters.

In 2018, Google spent $1.1 billion to acquire the ODM manufacturing assets of Taiwan-based smartphone brand HTC Inc, which had launched the Pixel lineup for the US customer.

In addition to transferring hardware assets to Google, HTC has transferred 2,000 of its engineers to work for the US tech giant, significantly increasing its workforce in Taiwan.

The team has continued to develop the Pixel for Google, and Google Taiwan has continued to hire for the past two years.

In January, Alphabet chief executive Sundar Pichai, who announced the global downsizing, said Google has seen dramatic growth over the past two years and assumed for a different economic reality than we face today.

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