Google Abandoned: Reasons Behind the Employee Exodus Revealed

Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia - Over recent months, Google has lost several of its best employees. A number of reasons are reported to have driven the wave of resignations.

One of them is the departure from research roles in pursuit of closing Google’s gap in the field of AI, specifically in support of Google’s Gemini.

A source reported that founder Sergey Brin spoke to hundreds of employees, urging DeepMind to move faster in narrowing the distance with its competitors.

Gemini was known to have briefly outperformed its rivals last November. It did not take long before it fell behind again when Anthropic and OpenAI launched new updates.

Google fell further behind after delaying the latest version of Gemini for two months following internal testing.

Amid this situation, parent company Alphabet is known to have moved several people from DeepMind to corporate Google.

The situation over recent months has raised questions about DeepMind’s autonomy. Google is said to have reduced it since acquiring the AI laboratory in 2014.

This became even more concerning after Demis Hassabis, head of the DeepMind division, stepped down at the same time. He was replaced by his deputy, Kora Kavukcuoglu.

Both of them met with DeepMind employees to allay staff concerns. They were reported to have only learned of the leadership change when it was announced to the public.

Staff are worried about the future of DeepMind going forward, as well as the risk to the laboratory’s autonomy as it is being taken over by the company.

Three sources said Google leaders assured that day-to-day work at DeepMind remains the same.