Google’s parent company Alphabet has announced it will cull 12,000 jobs, following the likes of Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft to cut thousands of roles as the tech industry adjusts to global financial pressures.

CEO Sundar Pichai announced the news in an email to staff over the weekend, explaining the cuts amount to roughly 6 per cent of the company’s global workforce.

“Over the past two years we’ve seen periods of dramatic growth,” he wrote, in a note titled, ‘A difficult decision to set us up for the future’.

“To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today.”

Of those cuts, Google has “made the difficult decision to wind down the majority of the Area 120 team,” according to a spokesperson. Area 120, launched in 2016, was the in-house incubator for new projects, and was working on “projects that build on Google’s deep investment in AI and have the potential to solve important user problems.”

“Many of Google’s best ideas begin as passion projects,” the Area 120 website explains.

The team working on the Fuchsia OS was also gutted, according to The New York Times, who reported that at least 16 per cent of the project’s 400 workers were given their marching orders.

Fuchsia is used in Google Nest Hub and was slated to feature heavily in the company’s continued smart home push.

“I am confident about the huge opportunity in front of us thanks to the strength of our mission, the value of our products and services, and our early investments in AI,” Pichai told staff.

“To fully capture it, we’ll need to make tough choices. So, we’ve undertaken a rigorous review across product areas and functions to ensure that our people and roles are aligned with our highest priorities as a company. The roles we’re eliminating reflect the outcome of that review.

“They cut across Alphabet, product areas, functions, levels and regions.”

At this time, it is unknown exactly how these cuts will impact Australian Alphabet employees, but with over 2,000 local workers, up to 120 jobs are expected to be on the line – in line with the global average.

Pichai said that, while American employees had already been informed of their fate within the company, “in other countries, this process will take longer due to local laws and practices.”

We have contacted Australian operations and will update the story once we learn more.