Articles by Hugh Langley

Business

Google offers voluntary buyouts to UK employees

Google is offering voluntary buyouts for employees in its UK offices, Business Insider has learned.An email went out to UK staff this week offering them a voluntary exit package, according to two people familiar with the matter and confirmed by a Google spokesperson. It's unclear which UK organizations the offers went to, or how many buyouts were offered. Google did not respond when asked for comment about this."Earlier this year, some of our US teams introduced a voluntary exit programme with severance for U.S.-based Googlers, and we are now also offering the programme in the UK to support our important work ahead," the Google spokesperson said."We are committed to investment in the UK and continue to hire for critical roles and important projects aligned with our company priorities to ensure we can deliver on the opportunity that AI offers the UK economy," they added.The voluntary buyouts are the latest example of Big Tech firms finding ways to reduce head count this year to become more efficient, flatten management structures, and lean into AI. Companies such as Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft have announced layoffs, while Microsoft has also offered some employees money to leave.The exact package being offered by Google in the UK would depend on how long the employee had worked at the company, staff were told. Google employs more than 7,000 people in the UK, according to its own figures.Google has offered voluntary buyouts across various parts of its US business this year, including its Android and Core engineering orgs. Much of the framing of these has been about how Google is reorienting its company around AI, and that it wants employees who aren't excited about that goal to feel like they can leave.In October, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan offered employees a voluntary exit package as part of a reorganization around AI priorities, according to a memo seen by Business Insider."It's an incredibly exciting time at YouTube and many opportunities and challenges lie ahead. But we also understand some of you may be ready for a new challenge, so we've decided now is the right time to offer a Voluntary Exit Program," Mohan wrote.Have something to share? Contact this reporter via email at hlangley@businessinsider.com or Signal at 628-228-1836. Use a personal email address and a non-work device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

Technology

Google is flexing its biggest advantage over OpenAI with Gemini 3

This was always the thing OpenAI needed to fear.On Tuesday, Google announced Gemini 3, its latest AI model. Google says it's better at coding, and much more creative — but that's not what its rivals should be most worried about.Google's all-out offensive is putting the "Pro" version of Gemini 3 directly into the hands of users and developers, and, most significantly, it marks the first time Google is introducing its new AI model to search on day one. That means users can access Gemini 3 in Google search by clicking "AI mode," rather than downloading an app or visiting a separate web page.While OpenAI owns ChatGPT, the most popular AI chatbot on the planet, it doesn't offer much else: it relies on partnerships for chips and data center space. Google, on the other hand, has it all, and can completely control its AI product from early-stage research to the in-house cloud that runs it to the YouTube recommendations and AI-generated search summaries that it delivers to users.However, OpenAI still holds one major advantage over Google, and, in a twist of fate, it's a branding game from which Google has benefited for years.Inside Business stories reveal the inner workings of companies from Silicon Valley to Wall Street that are shaping our world today.Google's model is what it calls its "full-stack" advantage. It doesn't have to lean on competitors the way many of its closest rivals do, nor get into the twisty game of circular financing.Speaking on a roundtable ahead of Gemini 3's launch, Google DeepMind CTO Koray Kavukcuoglu directly cited its end-to-end advantage as a reason for moving faster."One of the most important things for us at Google is this is possible because we have a very differentiated full-stack approach," he said.This is Google's AI funnel right now:Google's biggest challenge since late 2022 has been to get all of this in harmony, which was no easy task for an incumbent with almost 200,000 employees and a search advertising business it has spent decades trying not to disrupt.The alignment has demanded structural changes, bigger investments in its cloud business, and an internal push to get leaner and faster.It appears to finally be paying off.Even with Google now operating at full throttle, it has a brand problem. The word "ChatGPT" has become synonymous with AI for many people, in the way "Google" became shorthand for searching the internet or Kleenex for facial tissue.Lucky for Google, it has a lot of time to try to change that. While OpenAI had the first-mover advantage, Google has the cash-in-the-bank advantage. It already offers some of its models for free, and if Google wants to undercut rivals on price to get more of them into people's hands, it could."There's no debate that Google has all the technical intangibles across the stack (infrastructure, model, applications) and market channels to win," wrote Bernstein analyst Mark Schmulik in a note last month, "but we need HARD evidence that they're putting this all together."With Gemini 3, we may have just gotten some.Have something to share? Contact this reporter via email at hlangley@businessinsider.com or Signal at 628-228-1836. Use a personal email address and a non-work device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.