Google posts $307 bn revenue in 2023, spent billions of dollars to lay people off

Google, which spent $2.1 billion on severance and other expenses as it laid off more than 12,000 employees last year, will spend another $700 million on employee severance charges for the first quarter of this year.

Alphabet (the parent company of Google) posted revenues of $307 billion for the full year 2023, up 9 per cent compared to 2022.

"We ended with a strong fourth quarter (quarter ended December 31) with consolidated revenues of $86.3 billion, up 13 per cent versus last year in both reported and constant currency. Search remained the largest contributor to revenue growth," said Ruth Porat, Chief Financial Officer.

At this point in the quarter, the company estimates that severance-related expenses will be roughly $700 million in the first quarter "as we've continued these efforts".

"We will continue to invest in top engineering. So that's sort of the big one, if you start with product prioritization and organizational design, which is why also the note about the severance-related expense, which helps pave the way as we're continuing to do the work that we're doing," Porat told analysts during the earnings call late on Tuesday.

Within Google Services, revenues were $76.3 billion, up 12 per cent. Google Search and other advertising revenues of $48 billion in the quarter were up 13 per cent, led again by growth in retail. YouTube advertising revenues of $9.2 billion were up 16 per cent, driven by both direct response and brand advertising, said the company.

"Subscriptions are growing strongly, powered by YouTube Premium and Music, YouTube TV, and Google One. Three, Cloud, which crossed $9 billion in revenues this quarter and saw accelerated growth, driven by our gen AI and product leadership," said Sundar Pichai, Alphabet and Google CEO.

"We have long led the way in using AI to improve many of our products from search to ads to most of our consumer and enterprise products, helping billions of people already," he added.

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