The job cuts of Google towards Waze’s employees impact multiple roles in the Waze Ads unit, including sales, marketing, operations, and analytics.
Heaptalk, Jakarta — Google announced to conduct another job-cutting move toward its employees in the mapping applications business lines Waze. According to the email from the Head of Google’s maps division (Geo), Chris Philips, the company will inform its advertisers and partners team about this shocking announcement this Wednesday. (06/28)
This layoff comes after this giant technology company based in the United States acquired the Waze Advertisement system with Google Advertisement technology for about US$1.3 billion in 2013.
However, the company plans to transition Waze’s Ads management to the Global Business Organization (GBO) and align it with Google Maps, resulting in layoffs in multiple roles in the Waze Ads unit, including sales, marketing, operations, and analytics. According to CNBC, the email did not disclose further details regarding the number of impacted employees precisely from this job-cuts move.
“To create a better, more seamless long-term experience for Waze advertisers, we have begun transitioning Waze’s existing advertising system to Google Ads technology. As part of this update, we have reduced those roles focused on Waze Ads monetization and providing employees with mobility resources and severance options following local requirements,” Waze’s Head of Public Relations, Caroline Bourdeau, said
Since December, Google has consolidated Waze with its Geo business unit, which oversees maps. As a part of the recast effort, the company announced the CEO, Neha Parikh, would be stepping down. Waze uses a crowdsourcing technique to determine the fastest driving route from one location to another with the most recent traffic information, which 140 million active users have roughly operated.
In its merger effort, Google aims to consolidate processes, making it a part of the Google Geo division, its portfolio of real-world mapping products that include Google Maps, Google Earth, and Street View.
Apart from the layoffs issue in the Waze business line, Google’s parent, Alphabet Inc, also announced layoffs for its 12,000 global workforces in January 2023. This plan gained scrutiny as many parties noticed Alphabet’s revenue growing by around US$283 billion, representing a 10% enhancement YoY throughout 2022. Regarding employee diminishment, this giant tech company’s employees staged a strike at Google’s offices located in London.
“Google remains deeply committed to growing Waze’s unique brand, its beloved applications, and its thriving community of volunteers and users,” Caroline added, cited in the Verge.
