Google offering buyouts to employees across the company

Google is offering buyouts to employees based in the U.S. throughout the company, while pushing a return-to-office mandate for its staff. 

The Associated Press obtained a statement from Google spokesperson Courtenay Mencini that read, "Earlier this year, some of our teams introduced a voluntary exit program with severance for U.S.-based Googlers, and several more are now offering the program to support our important work ahead."

RELATED: DOJ is considering breaking up Google: Report

"A number of teams are also asking remote employees who live near an office to return to a hybrid work schedule in order to bring folks more together in-person," Mencini said.

How many Google workers are impacted by the buyouts?

Why you should care:

The number of employees impacted by the buyouts is unknown, but the offers were made to staff in Google's search, advertising, research and engineering units, the Associated Press reported, citing The Wall Street Journal. 

Google is offering the buyouts while the Mountain View, California, company waits for a federal judge to determine its fate after its search engine was specified as an illegal monopoly as part of a nearly 5-year-old case by the Department of Justice. The Associated Press noted that the tech giant is also awaiting remedy action in another antitrust case involving its digital ad network.

RELATED: Google layoffs: job cuts affect Google Assistant, Pixel and Fitbit

The Justice Department is also trying to force Google to relinquish some of the technology powering the organization’s digital ad network after a federal judge ruled that its digital ad network has been improperly abusing its market power to stifle competition to the detriment of online publishers.

In 2023, Google laid off 12,000 employees and since that time has been trimming some divisions to help strengthen its profits while increasing its spending on artificial intelligence, a technology that’s transforming its search engine into a more conversational answer engine.

Google return-to-office order

Big picture view:

Business Insider reported that the tech giant’s return-to-office requirement builds on a 2022 order requesting some U.S. based Google teams to work in the office three days a week, while still offering employees "work from anywhere" weeks. 

Google is now requiring all remote employees’ teams in several key divisions of the organization who live within 50 miles of an office to return to the office on a hybrid work schedule.