Google Winds Down Team Members at Area 120, Shutters Projects

Following the recent layoffs at Google’s parent company Alphabet, reports disclose that the Area 120 team has been winded down, and also projects have been shuttered.

Area 120 is Google’s in-house incubator in which employees work on 20% of project product ideas. It is responsible for products such as Stack, Checks, Tables, and threadbite. It has also helped developed Google news, Adsense, Gmail, and Google cardboard.

Due to the mass layoffs rocking the tech giant, a spokesperson at the company disclosed that only three projects in the incubator (Area 120) will graduate later this year, as virtually all other workers who weren’t involved in the three projects have been laid off.

The spokesperson further disclosed that employees in the U.S. who were affected by layoffs at Area 120 have been notified while noting that in other countries, the process will take longer to notify employees as it is subject to local laws and practices.

Investors King understands that last year September, Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai while speaking at a code conference, informed employees of a reduction in force, that will see the incubator (Area 120) halved in size.

Previously, there were 14 projects housed in Area 120, which has been cut down to seven. Employees whose projects will not continue were told they’ll need to find a new job within Google by the end of January 2023, or they will have their employment terminated.

The Area 120 division was created by Google’s CEO In March 2016 and has since spawned over 50 projects. The objective of the Area 120 program is to incubate products that graduate back to Google.

Over the years, the division has launched several successful products which include HtML5 gaming platform Gamesnacks, now integrated with Google Chrome, AI-Powered conversational ads platform Adlingo, which also exited to Cloud, video platforms Shoploop and Tangi, which exited to shopping and Google search, etc.

At the beginning of the year 2022, Area 120 had over 170 employees which were reduced to 100, and with the recent layoffs at the company, employees at the incubator will be further reduced.

Google has significantly slashed a major part of its workforce as it seeks to navigate the global economic downturn. The company isn’t the only Tech firm that has laid off workers, other tech companies such as Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft have also laid off a significant amount of their workforce.