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Greetings! Google appears to have learned a lesson from 2023, when its layoffs of 12,000 people, or 6.4% of its workforce, became big news and sparked anger among employees used to its cushy culture. In the past 18 months or so, Google has made a series of smaller cuts, mostly at the scale of "hundreds of people" each time, according to news reports in The Information and elsewhere. These have occurred across the company: in ad sales, hardware, engineering and Google Assistant, Google Cloud, the X Moonshot unit and—on Thursday night, as my colleague Erin Woo scooped—in the unit that houses Android software, the Chrome browser and Pixel phones. The total number of people cut is fuzzy—Google surely thinks, correctly, that announcing a big number draws more headlines than confirming a series of small, vaguely quantified cuts—but it seems likely to be in the thousands. It's notable, however, that Google's hiring, at least through Dec. 31, has more than offset the cuts. As of the end of 2024, Google reported 183,323 employees, which was an increase of about 800 on the end of 2023. The workforce shrank 4% in 2023, from a peak of 190,234 at the end of 2022, but it remains well above its year-end 2021 level of 156,500. Don't be surprised if the layoffs continue. For one thing, the company has a new chief financial officer, Anat Ashkenazi, who started last summer and said on her first earnings call in October that she planned to continue the cost cutting undertaken by her predecessor, Ruth Porat, noting that "any organization can always push a little further." And that was before Donald Trump was elected as president, ushering in a new tariff regime that is weakening the economic outlook in the near term. On top of that, given the competitive pressure Google is under in its search unit—where artificial intelligence chatbots like OpenAI's ChatGPT are likely drawing away search queries—the company needs to squeeze costs further. Google has long been a big, flabby organization that moves slowly. Paring away expenses relentlessly is a smart way to help change that. The AI revolution is having the same impact on Apple and Google that the internet revolution had on Microsoft: exposing their flaws and setting them back. Our deep dive this week into how Apple fumbled its AI efforts, forcing a delay in the rollout of dazzling new features the company showed off last June, is vital reading for anyone who wants to understand why the iPhone maker is stalled. The immediate explanation is a combination of mistakes in technology choices exacerbated by personality differences. (Google has had its own issues, as we've written about). The future of TikTok receded from the news, overwhelmed by the tariff dramas. It's likely to be a good long while before TikTok's ownership is resolved, bound up as it is with the China-U.S. trade war. Still, this week we shed light on why TikTok is important to ByteDance, revealing its 2024 full-year financial numbers—its international operations (mostly TikTok) are growing like wildfire—and ByteDance's plans for its own AI smart glasses. We covered the tariff-and-markets saga from several different angles. Online merchants are raising prices already, tacking on checkout fees (including one widely dubbed the "Trump liberation tariff" fee), while venture capitalists are warning startups to be more cautious with spending, an echo of the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. Here's a rundown of tech's biggest trade war losers (hint: most everyone). And we detailed how advertisers are rethinking their spending plans. And here's a valuation analysis of how Walmart and Amazon shares now compare. Even the tariff tsunami can't stop the AI news flow. Google Cloud's developer conference focused on new AI services from that tech firm, while our reporter Erin Woo talked to customers about their AI spending. Meta Platforms rushed out its latest version of Llama—number 4—to mixed reviews. While AI startup valuations are rising, the revenue metrics are getting fuzzier. The growing adoption of new open-source software that makes AI agents easier to develop is a threat to apps. Amazon, though, is trying to get ahead of the agentic threat with its own agent. And we revealed that Oracle is under pressure to finish a big new data center it is building in Texas for OpenAI. Also on the OpenAI front, the AI leader has recently discussed buying a startup working on an AI-powered device that is the project of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and former Apple designer Jony Ive. Start your weekend reading with our profile of Stripe co-founder Patrick Collison's efforts to develop a new political philosophy that is pro-tech and pro-growth—and able to gain bipartisan support. Also this week, Albert Saniger, founder and former CEO of e-commerce startup Nate, was charged with defrauding investors by making false claims about the company's AI capabilities, the Justice Department said. Longtime readers of The Information might remember our exposé from June 2022, revealing that when the startup claimed to be using AI to fill out shoppers' contact and payment information automatically during the checkout process, it actually was using workers in the Philippines to enter the data manually. - IVP, the 45-year-old firm known for its investments in Brex and Perplexity, is advising startup founders to readjust their annual budgets and raise capital, even if they have to forgo a valuation increase.
- The Chinese government said on Friday it will increase tariffs on U.S. imports to 125% from 84% effective Saturday, as the trade war between the two nations continues to escalate.
- Cable TV pioneer John Malone will not seek re-election to Warner Bros. Discovery's board of directors and will instead transition to the role of Chair Emeritus, the company announced on Friday.
- Meta Platforms on Friday announced it had named Dina Powell McCormick, a banking executive and former adviser to President Donald Trump, and Stripe CEO Patrick Collison to its board of directors.
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