Google Taiwan is reducing its workforce in the local market after Alphabet Inc., the parent company of the American search engine, announced in January that it would lay off 6 percent or 12,000 of its employees globally, as the international tech industry faces market uncertainty.

Local media reported recently that Google Taiwan kicked off the downsizing of its local workforce on March 1. Based on the company’s more than 3,000 employees in Taiwan, over 180 workers will be affected, the reports said.

In response, Google Taiwan issued a statement Friday, saying in line with its global workforce reduction plan, Taiwan operations will make corresponding adjustments which will abide by local labor regulations.

Although Google Taiwan did not disclose how many local employees will be let go, the company said it will provide as much assistance as possible to the affected employees, including extended employee benefits and other support programs.

The reports said other Google operations in the Asia Pacific region completed their workforce reductions by the end of February ahead of the action taken in Taiwan.

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

In 2018, Google spent US$1.1 billion to acquire Taiwan-based smartphone brand HTC Inc’s ODM manufacturing assets, which had rolled out the Pixel line for the U.S. client.

In addition to the disposal of the hardware assets to Google, HTC transferred 2,000 HTC engineers to work for the U.S. tech giant, significantly boosting its workforce in Taiwan. As a result, the team has continued to produce the Pixel for Google. Google Taiwan continued hiring over the past two years.

In January, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, who announced the global downsizing, said over the past two years Google had seen dramatic growth and hired “for a different economic reality than the one we face today.”

Pichai said the cut came across “Alphabet, product areas, functions, levels and regions.”

Alphabet is the latest tech giant to join a growing list of companies, including Microsoft Corp. and Amazon.com Inc., to have reduced their workforces at a time of weakening global demand in the wake of high inflation and aggressive rate hikes by major central banks in the world.

Alphabet’s sales and earnings for the fourth quarter of last year fell short of an earlier market estimate.

Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel