Google has reportedly laid off around 450 employees across several departments in India. In a late night email on Thursday, Google India's Country Head and Vice President Sanjay Gupta informed employees about the layoffs, as reported by ndtv.com.

In the previous month, Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet Inc. (the parent company of Google), announced plans to slash its global workforce by 6 per cent– a massive 12,000 job cuts as part of its strategy to adapt to the slow growth phase the company is going through.

However, it remains to be seen whether Thursday’s layoffs are a part of the global number and whether the severance package for its India division will be the same as that of the US.

“Over the past two years we’ve seen periods of dramatic growth. To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today,” Pichai said in an internal email to Google employees.

The CEO mentioned the elimination of roles would cut across Alphabet, product areas, functions, levels and regions.

The former IITian taking full responsibility for being the bearer of bad news said, “As an almost 25-year-old company, we’re bound to go through difficult economic cycles. These are important moments to sharpen our focus, reengineer our cost base, and direct our talent and capital to our highest priorities.”

Several Google India employees took to social media platforms like LinkedIn to share their dismay over the overnight change in their fortunes.

Angie Sasmita, an engineer at Google, said in a LinkedIn post, "I received the email late last night that I'm impacted by the Google layoff and further saddened to hear that my whole team is impacted."

"I have been recently impacted by Google layoffs and looking for a new role and would appreciate your support. Thank you in advance for any connection, advice or opportunities you can offer", said Ravi Kumar Bharadwaj, a systems development engineer in a similar post.

Google along with other titans of the tech industry such as Microsoft, Amazon, Zoom and Dell have declared huge job cuts to adjust to the changing market reality and concerns of slowdown in growth.

Earlier in January, Microsoft announced the slashing of its workforce by a whopping 5 per cent, which amounted to as many as 10,000 jobs. Amazon has revealed its plans of layoffs, which will impact roughly 18,000 employees across its human resources and stores division.