Google created Area 120 as a pilot project shuttle designed so that teams of workers could create innovative projects that could later be passed on to users. Some ideas have been able to prosper and reach users, such as the Stack document scanner.
However, others have not suffered the same fate. After a brief period of development, without even being released to the public, they have been cancelled. This was the case for Museletter at the end of 2021, but the Mountain View company has canceled up to 7 projects of Area 120 as collected in Android Authority.
What’s happening at Google?
Workspaces in Google offices
As we have learned, the CEO of Alphabet and Google, Sundar Pichai, has been talking about make google more efficient. Last July, an internal memo was leaked in which Pichai told his employees that the company would have to work with “greater urgency, more focus and with more hunger than we have shown in better days.”
According to the source, during the last Code Conference Pichai told the attendees that he was trying to make the Big G 20% more efficient. And now it seems that the CEO of Google is putting this idea into practice.
First, the cancellation of 7 projects has been confirmed Of 14 plans that Area 120 had underway, half is currently being worked on. However, the cancellation of projects is not the only efficient measure of Sundar Pichai. It has been speculating for some time that the Big G he wanted to reduce his staffAnd that seems to be happening right now.
Sundar Pichai during the Google IO
Reportedly, last Tuesday Google informed its workers that it was going to run a “downsizing” that would affect Area 120. Anyone who was working in the experimental project shuttle and has seen their project cancelled, has time until January 2023 to find a new job in the company or will be fired witheringly.
The efforts of the Area 120 team would now go through, according to the head of the project incubator, improve artificial intelligence-oriented projects. This clashes head-on with the approach that the division had until now, in which incubation was encouraged throughout the company.
It appears that one of the cut projects is one that offered web commerce solutions for digital creators. known by the name of Qaya. This project, unlike the other six discarded, had already been released to the public.
Apparently, Google is not alone that is going through an “efficiency gain” situation. Other Silicon Valley giants like Coinbase, Netflix, and Shopify are laying off hundreds of employees, so we may see more news like this in the future.