Illustration: The Verge Google spent $2.1 billion on severance and other expenses as it laid off more than 12‚000 employees over the course of 2023. And the layoff charges keep coming: in just the one month of 2024 so far‚ the company has already spent $700 million on employee severance charges as part of layoffs targeting another 1‚000-plus roles. Alphabet‚ Google’s parent company‚ revealed the figure alongside its fourth-quarter earnings release on Tuesday. Despite the cuts‚ Google ended 2023 with growth across most of its core business lines. Google posted $86 billion in revenue for the fourth quarter of 2023‚ a 13 percent increase year over year. The search giant’s core digital ads and cloud computing businesses also showed steady growth‚ which CEO Sundar... Continue reading…