Layoffs at Google parent company include robots that cleaned its cafeteria

Google’s recent round of layoffs affected 12,000 workers at the company didn’t stop with the human workers. The belt tightening also resulted in over 100 robot workers being powered down, Wired reports.

The Everyday Robots department, which was one of the divisions shuttered by Google CEO Sundar Pichai, had trained 100 one-armed, wheeled robots to help clean the company’s cafeterias, squeegeeing tables, as well as separating trash and recycling. The robots also helped keep conference rooms clean during the pandemic.

While the Everyday Robotics team will no longer be a standalone project at Alphabet, some of its technology could be folded into other divisions, the company said.

Google has made several robotic acquisitions in its history, with an eye on developing a robot that would be consumer-friendly. While a table cleaning butler-bot sounds encouraging, the group was in the process of taking things a step further, integrating generative A.I. into a helper. So, for instance, you could tell the robot you were hungry and it could fetch food for you. (Wired notes that prototype was a long way from being consumer ready, however.)

Moonshot projects like Everyday Robots have panned out for Alphabet in the past, with Google Fiber and Nest thermostats being the most prominent examples. But not all of them succeed and they incur notable losses.

Google’s cost cutting, meanwhile, is seemingly more severe than past layoffs. The company has asked employees who do return to share desks with a “partner” to maximize office space.