Paired with the Pixel 4a "update of death" it feels like Google is throwing in the towel on smartphones. I don't care about Pixel but I do worry about Android - as flawed as it is, it's still the only viable option for an "open" smartphone. I've been playing around with a Pinephone lately and it's lots of fun but obviously not ready for use as a daily driver.
> The Department of Justice’s list of solutions for fixing Google’s illegal antitrust behavior and restoring competition in the search engine market started with ... breaking off Chrome, Android, or Google Play as the DOJ’s filing considers
If Google takes the foot off the pedal on mobile, it will leave a gap in the smartphone market wide enough to drive a truck through.
A group of smart folks who worked on Pixel & Android can take voluntary redundancy together and start a company with the tech and their experience.
What a wonderful world that’d be - to be able to buy SOTA devices made by a company that doesn’t also make tracking software that tracks you all over the Internet, and that doesn’t want to show you ads. A company that just wants to sell you a product that you buy with your money.
This is what anti-monopoly regulation is for - we all just forgot during the recent period of lax enforcement.
> A group of smart folks who worked on Pixel & Android can take voluntary redundancy together and start a company with the tech and their experience
How did that work out for Andy Rubin and the Essential Phone?
It takes more than money, experience, and collective brain power to build a modern smartphone of sufficient dependability. Unfortunately, most companies in this space, both new and old, are more likely to shoot themselves in the feet than offer a compelling alternative to the incumbents like Apple and Samsung.
It's what Carl Pei did with Nothing phone. They do a great job for such a small team. However their company is still losing money with 500mil revenue. It's almost impossible to compete in this market with the big boys.
May be a paid OS with a 10-15$/year subscription to fund the development might work if enough people are interested, but seeking how the mod ecosystem has stagnated I don't see how will this work.
Would love this, in light of recent decision-making at the bigger companies. I refuse to use Google products when it’s at all possible to avoid them, and would prefer to move away from Apple (for similar but different reasons).
That said, it’s hard to imagine anyone in the current tech ecosystem (where everything is either ARR-driven, or “free”) building an OS that isn’t bloated with tracking and spyware.
I mean I don't trust Google as far as I can throw a TPU datacenter, but they are promising 7 years of OS updates on Pixel. And so are companies like Samsung. Many others offer 3, and even the low-rent "we have your money... I mean... who dis?" manufacturers are offering 2, so it's not like Android is going anywhere. There are just too many players. Honestly, I wouldn't get a Pixel because they are uninspired devices, not because Google will stop supporting them tomorrow.
What does seem to be happening is that the core "user facing" Android (vs all the AI stuff and Play Services-based apps like Maps) is getting more and more settled as a stack and Google is cutting development staff to reflect that. To be fair, I can't speak deeply as to what's happening under the hood, just the touchy bits.
My phone started with Android 9 and is now on Android 15. 10, 11 and 12 all had (compared to now) larger changes. However, if you held a gun to my head and asked me what has changed with Android 13 and on, my answer would be "stuff seems a little rounder" ...and maybe a new font? But it sorta just feels like a new version of the old font. You just don't need that many people for Android's current evolution rate. Which really sucks for all the folks losing their jobs.
> Not offering people the option to leave in advance was a complaint about how Google handled past layoffs.
Guess we know what’s coming.
Very interesting that this only applies to US based employees. I wonder how long before Google completely moves overseas and drops most of their domestic employees.
Voluntary exits are generally more humane, and have been used across Silicon Valley for decades before layoffs became common, so hopefully it minimizes suffering of layoffs.
Also, I’m surprised the title just calls out Pixel and Android, because this also affects most of their hardware efforts (Fitbit, Nest, Chrome, VR, etc)
Edit: I’ve heard from people there that the buyout is worse than previous rounds of severance from layoffs - namely, no stock vesting
"Android (Auto, TV, Wear OS, XR), Chrome, ChromeOS, Google Photos, Google One, Pixel, Fitbit, and Nest."
It's a way to avoid 3% or 5% layoffs. That's a big group. With how fast their AI Labs group is moving, I could see some employees not being fans of the direction this group is taking.
They're not doing "voluntary exits" out of the goodness of their hearts, they're doing it because their accountants determined that the cost of paying employees to quit outweighed the reputational damage of doing another round of mass layoffs.
Of course! But it’s better than randomly laying people off. At least it lets people who are ready to quit take the accounting impact instead of others.
Layoffs cause huge emotional trauma to people who are affected. People often slide into serious mental health issues, financial issues, etc. Often people get laid off while their peers were eyeing the door. This at least allows people to quit and take the heat off their coworkers.
Voluntary exits are pointless if you're planning to lay off the entire team. It usually means that they're keeping part of the team, and want to make sure that they keep the part that'll actually stick around.
It's most likely an attempt to give low performers (if you received a bad rating for last year) a chance to leave on your own terms before they lay you off.
If I was in that bucket I would definitely take this offer.
Looks like all the large tech companies are doing aggressive stack ranking right now.
The job market is terrible right now. More likely the high performers will take the offer because they believe they have better chances of being rehired somewhere else. Good luck to them though.
Assuming the events are independent, P(you get laid off) x P(you don't find a new job) will always be less than 1.0 x P(you don't find a new job)
The rules are complex but if a company wants to lay off many people in one location they have to give notice in advance and usually choose to just payout that notice time.
Note that they're only offering this to people who work on that program in the US. People outside the US didn't get the offer, implying that the program as a whole survives.
All it implies to me is that labor law outside the US is complex, and Google HR is smart enough not to make this offer in places where it will cause them more problems.
Ugh Google's so frustrating. They make great software and products but throw in the towel on anything that's not immediately profitable since ads have too high a margin and their investors get restless...
I have already taken baby steps to get off Google Photos. Next on my list is my Android TV. I heard Apple will be releasing another home device this fall so I will buy whatever it is. Apple should thank Google for being so ridiculous.
I had never heard of the term "voluntary exit" until I heard that the Trump administration is going to do that for federal workers. Is this going to be the new normal?
> “to be deeply committed to our mission and focused on building great products, with speed and efficiency"
I hate this language. It sounds culty. Why can't a job just be a job? Why does everything have to have a god damn "mission"?
It's usually called a buyout. We'll give you N weeks of salary per year of service to leave now. When an employer is in structural decline (like newspapers), you expect a series of buyout offers with declining N until finally there are actual layoffs.
Some places do buyouts to avoid triggering certain laws relating to mass layoffs. There are a bunch of names for buyouts, voluntary exit isn't particularly weird.
Elon made this popular with Twitter/X. Offered a voluntary exit in the "Fork in the road" email with a deadline. The message was quite similar, that if you're not aligned with the company's [new] vision, you can choose to leave with severance.
Sure, it's certainly better than layoffs. I don't really dispute that. I'd rather get a severance and I have at least a nominal option about leaving instead of being forced out.
I guess I'm just sick of companies massively overhiring, creating a ton of redundant employees in the process, and deciding to get rid of a ton afterward. We give these corporations so much power in our lives and they treat us like pawns. They control our healthcare and dictate where we live, they should treat this power with the responsibility it deserves.
I imagine it's either (or both) of the following: job seekers started wanting that in their ads, and people with this way of thinking entered the internal recruitment world.
Pretty common for most big mature companies to do at one point or another as their section of the economy swings up and down. This is probably only new for new big teh companies they have only experienced growth. Cisco has done plenty, and the defense industry does it a lot as contracts wind down.
Way less of a morale hit than layoffs, but it suffers a similar problem to all RIF methods where your high performers say "hmm conditions are that bad you're getting rid of people huh? I guess maybe I will take 6 months my annual salary and go get another job."
Paired with the Pixel 4a "update of death" it feels like Google is throwing in the towel on smartphones. I don't care about Pixel but I do worry about Android - as flawed as it is, it's still the only viable option for an "open" smartphone. I've been playing around with a Pinephone lately and it's lots of fun but obviously not ready for use as a daily driver.
Which is a shame. I love Samsung's hardware, but the crapware they pile on top of Android is intolerable.
Thankfully, I MDM my personal devices and can neuter most of it from there.
> Paired with the Pixel 4a "update of death" it feels like Google is throwing in the towel on smartphones
Yeah, but their hand may be forced:
https://www.theverge.com/2024/12/21/24326402/google-search-a...:
> The Department of Justice’s list of solutions for fixing Google’s illegal antitrust behavior and restoring competition in the search engine market started with ... breaking off Chrome, Android, or Google Play as the DOJ’s filing considers
The last 3 Pixel designs have been uninspired. The CPUs in them have also been disappointing.
It's almost as if Google doesn't really care anymore.
It's almost as if Google does Google things ... abandoning projects.
Why this is exciting:
If Google takes the foot off the pedal on mobile, it will leave a gap in the smartphone market wide enough to drive a truck through.
A group of smart folks who worked on Pixel & Android can take voluntary redundancy together and start a company with the tech and their experience.
What a wonderful world that’d be - to be able to buy SOTA devices made by a company that doesn’t also make tracking software that tracks you all over the Internet, and that doesn’t want to show you ads. A company that just wants to sell you a product that you buy with your money.
This is what anti-monopoly regulation is for - we all just forgot during the recent period of lax enforcement.
> A group of smart folks who worked on Pixel & Android can take voluntary redundancy together and start a company with the tech and their experience
How did that work out for Andy Rubin and the Essential Phone?
It takes more than money, experience, and collective brain power to build a modern smartphone of sufficient dependability. Unfortunately, most companies in this space, both new and old, are more likely to shoot themselves in the feet than offer a compelling alternative to the incumbents like Apple and Samsung.
That may be true, but this is frequently how progress is made. Employees from old stagnant megacorp launching something new and better..
As much as I'd like that to happen, it seems to depend on some big "ifs." Fingers crossed, I guess.
It's what Carl Pei did with Nothing phone. They do a great job for such a small team. However their company is still losing money with 500mil revenue. It's almost impossible to compete in this market with the big boys.
May be a paid OS with a 10-15$/year subscription to fund the development might work if enough people are interested, but seeking how the mod ecosystem has stagnated I don't see how will this work.
Would love this, in light of recent decision-making at the bigger companies. I refuse to use Google products when it’s at all possible to avoid them, and would prefer to move away from Apple (for similar but different reasons).
That said, it’s hard to imagine anyone in the current tech ecosystem (where everything is either ARR-driven, or “free”) building an OS that isn’t bloated with tracking and spyware.
Fun. Definitely looking forward to competing with a bunch of newly-former-Googlers on the job market now. :/
You've got this!
Doesn't make me want to buy the next Pixel.
Don't be such a Redditor, if you're here you already know Google doesn't support their products. So you already made the choice long ago.
I mean I don't trust Google as far as I can throw a TPU datacenter, but they are promising 7 years of OS updates on Pixel. And so are companies like Samsung. Many others offer 3, and even the low-rent "we have your money... I mean... who dis?" manufacturers are offering 2, so it's not like Android is going anywhere. There are just too many players. Honestly, I wouldn't get a Pixel because they are uninspired devices, not because Google will stop supporting them tomorrow.
What does seem to be happening is that the core "user facing" Android (vs all the AI stuff and Play Services-based apps like Maps) is getting more and more settled as a stack and Google is cutting development staff to reflect that. To be fair, I can't speak deeply as to what's happening under the hood, just the touchy bits.
My phone started with Android 9 and is now on Android 15. 10, 11 and 12 all had (compared to now) larger changes. However, if you held a gun to my head and asked me what has changed with Android 13 and on, my answer would be "stuff seems a little rounder" ...and maybe a new font? But it sorta just feels like a new version of the old font. You just don't need that many people for Android's current evolution rate. Which really sucks for all the folks losing their jobs.
mines great! its buggy as shit and burned out pixels in the screen. Thats why they call it the "pixel"
> Not offering people the option to leave in advance was a complaint about how Google handled past layoffs.
Guess we know what’s coming.
Very interesting that this only applies to US based employees. I wonder how long before Google completely moves overseas and drops most of their domestic employees.
Voluntary exits are generally more humane, and have been used across Silicon Valley for decades before layoffs became common, so hopefully it minimizes suffering of layoffs.
Also, I’m surprised the title just calls out Pixel and Android, because this also affects most of their hardware efforts (Fitbit, Nest, Chrome, VR, etc)
Edit: I’ve heard from people there that the buyout is worse than previous rounds of severance from layoffs - namely, no stock vesting
"Android (Auto, TV, Wear OS, XR), Chrome, ChromeOS, Google Photos, Google One, Pixel, Fitbit, and Nest."
It's a way to avoid 3% or 5% layoffs. That's a big group. With how fast their AI Labs group is moving, I could see some employees not being fans of the direction this group is taking.
They're not doing "voluntary exits" out of the goodness of their hearts, they're doing it because their accountants determined that the cost of paying employees to quit outweighed the reputational damage of doing another round of mass layoffs.
Of course! But it’s better than randomly laying people off. At least it lets people who are ready to quit take the accounting impact instead of others.
Layoffs cause huge emotional trauma to people who are affected. People often slide into serious mental health issues, financial issues, etc. Often people get laid off while their peers were eyeing the door. This at least allows people to quit and take the heat off their coworkers.
Sounds to me like it's going to be either take the "voluntary exit" with the severance, or if you don't then eventually get let go without one.
Voluntary exits are pointless if you're planning to lay off the entire team. It usually means that they're keeping part of the team, and want to make sure that they keep the part that'll actually stick around.
> want to make sure that they keep the part that'll actually stick around
The part that can't easily get jobs elsewhere?
It's most likely an attempt to give low performers (if you received a bad rating for last year) a chance to leave on your own terms before they lay you off.
If I was in that bucket I would definitely take this offer.
Looks like all the large tech companies are doing aggressive stack ranking right now.
The job market is terrible right now. More likely the high performers will take the offer because they believe they have better chances of being rehired somewhere else. Good luck to them though.
Assuming the events are independent, P(you get laid off) x P(you don't find a new job) will always be less than 1.0 x P(you don't find a new job)
Don't forget to factor in unemployment benefits, which typically don't apply if you quit.
Severance would be there even if you are let go i.e laid off
>Severance would be there even if you are let go i.e laid off
Depends on their employment contract, I don't think it's necessarily guaranteed.
The rules are complex but if a company wants to lay off many people in one location they have to give notice in advance and usually choose to just payout that notice time.
Maybe uncertainty will mean reintroducing at least one other vendor for future grapheneOS releases?
Does it mean anything for the Pixel program? Is it going to be continued?
Note that they're only offering this to people who work on that program in the US. People outside the US didn't get the offer, implying that the program as a whole survives.
All it implies to me is that labor law outside the US is complex, and Google HR is smart enough not to make this offer in places where it will cause them more problems.
Ugh Google's so frustrating. They make great software and products but throw in the towel on anything that's not immediately profitable since ads have too high a margin and their investors get restless...
I have already taken baby steps to get off Google Photos. Next on my list is my Android TV. I heard Apple will be releasing another home device this fall so I will buy whatever it is. Apple should thank Google for being so ridiculous.
I suspect there are plenty of unmotivated people who got rich from rsus already, and this is early retirement offer for mutual benefit.
I had never heard of the term "voluntary exit" until I heard that the Trump administration is going to do that for federal workers. Is this going to be the new normal?
> “to be deeply committed to our mission and focused on building great products, with speed and efficiency"
I hate this language. It sounds culty. Why can't a job just be a job? Why does everything have to have a god damn "mission"?
It's usually called a buyout. We'll give you N weeks of salary per year of service to leave now. When an employer is in structural decline (like newspapers), you expect a series of buyout offers with declining N until finally there are actual layoffs.
This was common in 2008, during the dot com crash, and in plenty of other industries. Definitely not a new thing.
Some places do buyouts to avoid triggering certain laws relating to mass layoffs. There are a bunch of names for buyouts, voluntary exit isn't particularly weird.
Elon made this popular with Twitter/X. Offered a voluntary exit in the "Fork in the road" email with a deadline. The message was quite similar, that if you're not aligned with the company's [new] vision, you can choose to leave with severance.
It seems better than doing random layoffs, no?
Sure, it's certainly better than layoffs. I don't really dispute that. I'd rather get a severance and I have at least a nominal option about leaving instead of being forced out.
I guess I'm just sick of companies massively overhiring, creating a ton of redundant employees in the process, and deciding to get rid of a ton afterward. We give these corporations so much power in our lives and they treat us like pawns. They control our healthcare and dictate where we live, they should treat this power with the responsibility it deserves.
I imagine it's either (or both) of the following: job seekers started wanting that in their ads, and people with this way of thinking entered the internal recruitment world.
Pretty common for most big mature companies to do at one point or another as their section of the economy swings up and down. This is probably only new for new big teh companies they have only experienced growth. Cisco has done plenty, and the defense industry does it a lot as contracts wind down.
Way less of a morale hit than layoffs, but it suffers a similar problem to all RIF methods where your high performers say "hmm conditions are that bad you're getting rid of people huh? I guess maybe I will take 6 months my annual salary and go get another job."