Alphabet cuts costs, even fires robots that cleaned the cafeteria

Even robots have no job security at Google’s parent company Alphabet.

According to a report from Wired, the tech giant has turned off costly machines that separate canteen tables from trash and mops built by robotics subsidiary Everyday Robots as part of a company-wide budget cut.

“Everyday Robots will no longer be a separate Alphabet project,” Denise Gamboa, head of marketing and communications for Everyday Robots, told The Post.

“Some technologies and part of the team will be merged into existing robotics efforts within Google Research,” she added.

According to Wired, Everyday Robots once employed more than 200 people. But the division was unable to articulate a clear vision as managers could not decide whether they wanted to focus on cutting-edge research or hope to bring the product to market.

According to Wired, the robots produced by the division were too expensive for regular buyers, and each was valued at tens of thousands of dollars.

In 2021, Hans Peter Brondmo, chief robot and general manager of the Everyday Robots project, published a blog post saying that his team has trained more than 100 robots that “autonomously perform a number of useful tasks in our offices.”

“The same robot that sorts trash can now be equipped with a mop to wipe tables, and the same gripper that grabs cups can learn to open doors,” Brondmo wrote.

Everyday Robots was the brainchild of X, Alphabet’s R&D factory, which in recent years has been forced to shut down projects deemed not economically viable.

In 2021, X closed its Loon division, which made balloons equipped with internet transfer capability.

A year earlier, Alphabet shut down Makani, which made kites capable of generating electricity using mini wind turbines.

Waymo, Alphabet’s self-driving car project, is slowly but surely entering mainstream markets. His cars are now running in test mode in three cities – Los Angeles, Phoenix and San Francisco.

But the robotaxis division is facing government regulators who are skeptical about allowing the new technology on the road, especially in light of recent crashes that have been blamed on autonomous vehicles in some vehicles.

The closure of Everyday Robots comes as Alphabet is tightening its belts amid the economic downturn.

Alphabet announced last month that it was laying off about 12,000 employees, joining other tech giants such as Microsoft, Amazon, Twitter, Meta, Salesforce, Snap and others.

According to a memo obtained by CNBC, scores of Google employees in the company’s cloud division were told earlier this week that they needed to share desktops and rotate the days they came into the office so they didn’t overlap with their desk colleagues.

According to the latest regulatory filings, Alphabet’s workforce during the pandemic increased to almost 187,000 by the end of last year from 119,000 at the end of 2019.

Earlier this month, Alphabet’s shares fell more than 7% and the company’s market capitalization fell by about $100 billion following the failed deployment of ChatGPT competitor Bard.