Shillong, July 23: Google, facing the challenges of the global economic slowdown, has recently let go of its Indian-origin Director of News, Madhav Chinnappa, after nearly 13 years of service. Chinnappa confirmed his departure in a LinkedIn post, expressing pride in his achievements during his tenure at Google.
Reflecting on his contributions, Chinnappa highlighted various initiatives, such as the Digital News Initiative and the Google News Initiative Innovation Challenges, which aimed to support the media R&D culture in Europe. He also praised JERF, the Journalism Emergency Relief Fund, which demonstrated Google’s commitment to helping vulnerable parts of the news ecosystem.
After leaving Google, Chinnappa plans to take a month off to focus on personal matters and family issues. He intends to explore new opportunities and consider his career’s next steps starting from October, with a vision to accomplish more in 2024.
Google’s job cuts in January affected around 12,000 employees worldwide, and the company recently announced layoffs at its mapping app, Waze, as part of its efforts to integrate mapping products with Google’s ads system. This decision will lead to job cuts in Waze’s sales, marketing, operations, and analytics departments.
CNBC reported that the company is moving Waze over to Google’s ads system which means there will be job cuts at Waze in “sales, marketing, operations and analytics”.