Musk Lays off Tesla Senior Executives in Fresh Job Cuts

(FILES) A Tesla Model Y car stands in front of the company's plant as Tesla CEO Elon Musk visits the company's electric car plant in Gruenheide near Berlin, eastern Germany, on March 13, 2024, as employees resumed work after production had to be halted due to a suspected arson attack that caused a power outage. (Photo by Odd ANDERSEN / AFP)
(FILES) A Tesla Model Y car stands in front of the company's plant as Tesla CEO Elon Musk visits the company's electric car plant in Gruenheide near Berlin, eastern Germany, on March 13, 2024, as employees resumed work after production had to be halted due to a suspected arson attack that caused a power outage. (Photo by Odd ANDERSEN / AFP)
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Musk Lays off Tesla Senior Executives in Fresh Job Cuts

(FILES) A Tesla Model Y car stands in front of the company's plant as Tesla CEO Elon Musk visits the company's electric car plant in Gruenheide near Berlin, eastern Germany, on March 13, 2024, as employees resumed work after production had to be halted due to a suspected arson attack that caused a power outage. (Photo by Odd ANDERSEN / AFP)
(FILES) A Tesla Model Y car stands in front of the company's plant as Tesla CEO Elon Musk visits the company's electric car plant in Gruenheide near Berlin, eastern Germany, on March 13, 2024, as employees resumed work after production had to be halted due to a suspected arson attack that caused a power outage. (Photo by Odd ANDERSEN / AFP)

Elon Musk has dismissed two Tesla senior executives and plans to lay off hundreds more employees, frustrated by falling sales and the pace of job cuts so far, The Information reported on Tuesday, citing the CEO's email to senior managers.
Rebecca Tinucci, senior director of the electric vehicle maker's Supercharger business, and Daniel Ho, head of the new vehicles program, will leave on Tuesday morning, the report said.
Musk also plans to dismiss everyone working for Tinucci and Ho, including the roughly 500 employees who work in the Supercharger group, The Information said. It was not clear how many employees worked for Ho.
Tesla's public policy team, which was led by former executive Rohan Patel, will also be dissolved, the report said.
"Hopefully these actions are making it clear that we need to be absolutely hard core about headcount and cost reduction," Musk wrote in the email, the report said. "While some on exec staff are taking this seriously, most are not yet doing so."
Tesla, which had 140,473 employees globally as of end-2023, did not immediately respond to a Reuters' request for comment.
Ho joined Tesla in 2013 and was a program manager in the development of the Model S, the 3, and the Y before being put in charge of all new vehicles, while Tinucci joined in 2018 as a senior product manager, according to their LinkedIn profiles.
Two other senior leaders -- Patel and battery development chief Drew Baglino -- announced their departures earlier this month, when Tesla also ordered the layoffs of more than 10% of its workforce.
Tesla is grappling with falling sales and an intensifying price war, which led to its quarterly revenue falling for the first time since 2020, the company reported last week.
Musk made progress towards rolling out Tesla's advanced driver-assistance package in China, the epicenter of the EV price war, during a surprise visit to Beijing on Sunday.
That trip came just over a week after he scrapped a planned trip to India, where Tesla has long sought to start operations, due to "very heavy Tesla obligations."



US Urges Curb of Google’s Search Dominance as AI Looms 

An illuminated Google logo is seen inside an office building in Zurich, Switzerland, December 5, 2018. (Reuters)
An illuminated Google logo is seen inside an office building in Zurich, Switzerland, December 5, 2018. (Reuters)
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US Urges Curb of Google’s Search Dominance as AI Looms 

An illuminated Google logo is seen inside an office building in Zurich, Switzerland, December 5, 2018. (Reuters)
An illuminated Google logo is seen inside an office building in Zurich, Switzerland, December 5, 2018. (Reuters)

US government attorneys urged a federal judge Monday to make Google spin off its Chrome browser, arguing artificial intelligence is poised to ramp up the tech giant's online search dominance.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) made its pitch at a hearing before District Judge Amit Mehta, who is considering "remedies" after making a landmark decision last year that Google maintained an illegal monopoly in online search.

"Nothing less than the future of the internet is at stake here," Assistant Attorney General Gail Slater said prior to the start of the hearing in Washington.

"If Google's conduct is not remedied, it will control much of the internet for the next decade and not just in internet search, but in new technologies like artificial intelligence."

Google is among the tech companies investing heavily to be among the leader in AI, and is weaving the technology into search and other online offerings.

Google countered in the case that the United States has gone way beyond the scope of the suit by recommending a spinoff of its widely used Chrome, and holding open the option to force a sale of its Android mobile operating system.

The legal case focused on Google's agreements with partners such as Apple and Samsung to distribute its search tools, noted Google president of global affairs Kent Walker.

"The DOJ chose to push a radical interventionist agenda that would harm Americans and America's global technology leadership," Walker wrote in a blog post.

"The DOJ's wildly overbroad proposal goes miles beyond the Court's decision."

The DOJ case against Google regarding its dominance in internet search was filed in 2020.

Judge Mehta ruled against Google in August 2024.

- Ad tech under fire -

Google's battle to protect Chrome renewed just days after a different US judge ruled this month that it wielded monopoly power in the online ad technology market, in a legal blow that could rattle the tech giant's revenue engine.

The federal government and more than a dozen US states filed the antitrust suit against Alphabet-owned Google, accusing it of acting illegally to dominate three sectors of digital advertising -- publisher ad servers, advertiser tools, and ad exchanges.

The vast majority of websites use Google ad software products that, combined, leave no way for publishers to escape Google's advertising technology, the plaintiffs alleged.

District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema agreed with most of that reasoning, ruling that Google built an illegal monopoly over ad software and tools used by publishers, but partially dismissed the argument related to tools used by advertisers.

"Google has willfully engaged in a series of anticompetitive acts to acquire and maintain monopoly power in the publisher ad server and ad exchange markets for open-web display advertising," Brinkema said in her ruling.

The judge concluded that Google further entrenched its monopoly power with anticompetitive customer policies and by eliminating desirable product features.

Online advertising is the driving engine of Google's fortune and pays for widely used online services like Maps, Gmail, and search offered free.

Money pouring into Google's coffers also allows the Silicon Valley company to spend billions of dollars on its artificial intelligence efforts.

Combined, the courtroom defeats have the potential to leave Google split up and its influence curbed.

Google said it is appealing both rulings.