Google has announced that it plans to slash 4,000 jobs as part of a restructure of its Motorola Mobility hardware business, after the division recently posted a $233 million quarterly loss, having posted losses in 14 of the last 16 quarters.
According to a The New York Times, the job cuts represents 20% of the total workforce for Motorola Mobility, leading to the closure of one-third of the division’s offices worldwide, with the division to lose of 40% of its vice presidents.
Two-thirds of the positions to be axed will be outside the United States, although it is still unclear how the division’s Australian operations will be impacted by the announcement.
Google is also keen to reduce the number of Motorola products from 27 to a smaller number of key products, with a core Advanced Technology and Projects team, led by former Pentagon Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Director Regina Dugan.
Google’s $US12.5 billion takeover of Motorola Mobility, first announced in August last year, was finally completed in May after several months of negotiations with regulators.
News of the restructure comes after former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt revealed Google’s long-term ambitions in hardware, recently stating: “Larry [Page] and Sergey [Brin] have always wanted to do hardware in one form or another. This [Motorola Mobility takeover] was a way to get into it quickly.”
Andrew Sadauskas is a former journalist at SmartCompany and a former editor of TechCompany.
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