Google employees are criticizing leadership, most notably CEO Sundar Pichai, for the way the company handled the announcement this week of its ChatGPT competitor called Bard.
Staffers took to the popular internal forum Memegen to express their thoughts on the Bard announcement, referring to it as “rushed,” “botched” and “un-Googley,” according to messages and memes viewed by CNBC.
On Monday, Google got ahead of a Microsoft event the following day and had Pichai publicly divulge some details of the company’s chatbot technology. More about Bard was revealed on Wednesday at an event held in Paris.
In between those events, Microsoft, an early investor in ChatGPT creator OpenAI, showcased how its Bing search engine will integrate with the buzzy chat technology, inviting reporters to a demonstration at the company’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington.
During Google’s Wednesday event, search boss Prabhakar Raghavan briefly shared some slides with examples of Bard’s capabilities. People tuning in expected to hear more, and some employees weren’t even aware of the event. One presenter forgot to bring a phone that was required for the demo.
Meanwhile, people on Twitter began pointing out that an ad for Bard offered an incorrect description of a telescope used to take the first pictures of a planet outside our solar system.
While Google employees often turn to Memegen to humorously poke fun at the company’s quirks and missteps, the posts after the Bard announcement struck a more serious tone and even went directly after Pichai.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks during a keynote address announcing ChatGPT integration for Bing at Microsoft in Redmond, Washington, on February 7, 2023.
Jason Redmond | AFP | Getty Images
“Dear Sundar, the Bard launch and the layoffs were rushed, botched, and myopic,” read one meme that included a serious picture of Pichai. “Please return to taking a long-term outlook.” The post received many upvotes from employees.
A Google representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“Sundar, and leadership, deserve a Perf NI,” another highly rated meme read, referring to the lowest category in the company’s employee performance review system. “They are being comically short sighted and un-Googlely in their pursuit of ‘sharpening focus.'”
Last year, Pichai called on employees to be more focused. Leadership often implores staffers to be “Googley,” which loosely means being ambitious and hardworking, with respect and teamwork in mind.
Alphabet shares have tumbled more than 9% this week on concerns about ChatGPT’s threat to Google’s core search business and to the company’s hastened reaction to Microsoft’s event.
“Rushing Bard to market in a panic validated the market’s fear about us,” one highly rated meme read. The attached photo was of a bird doing a facepalm.
Google’s position in artificial intelligence is a familiar concern. At a December all-hands meeting, employees asked about the company’s competitive edge in AI as ChatGPT was taking off in the public eye. Executives responded by saying thecompany’s reputation could suffer if it moves too fast on AI-chat technology, which is far from perfect.
A highly read meme this week showed an image of a dumpster fire with the Google “G” logo on it. The text said, “How everything’s felt since last year.”
Another meme referred to last month’s announced layoffs, which resulted in the loss of 12,000 jobs, or 6% of the company’s workforce. The meme featured a photo of actor Nicolas Cage smiling and said “Firing 12k people rises the stock by 3%, one rushed AI presentation drops it by 8%.”
Dylan Field, co-founder and CEO of Figma, appears on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on July 31, 2025.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Figma shares dropped 23% on Monday, cutting into the gains the design software company posted after hitting the market last week.
The stock dropped $27.50 to $94.50 as of midday. That’s down from a close of $122 on Friday.
Figma and top stockholders sold about 37 million shares at $33 per share late Wednesday, yielding around $412 million in proceeds flowing to the company. On Thursday, its first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange, the stock more than tripled.
The initial reception shows a renewed appetite on Wall Street for high-growth technology companies after a historically slow stretch for initial public offerings.
Figma said in an updated IPO prospectus that it expects second-quarter revenue to increase about 40% from a year earlier. But unlike many technology companies that have gone public over the past several years, Figma has regularly posted profits.
Figma’s fully diluted valuation sits at approximately $56 billion, almost triple the amount Adobe agreed to pay in its 2022 acquisition offer. Regulators in the European Union and the U.K. opposed the deal, which the two companies called off in late 2023.
Dylan Field, Figma’s 33-year-old CEO, owns stock in the company worth more than $5 billion even after Monday’s slide.
The logo for Wondery is displayed on a smartphone in an arranged photograph taken in the Brooklyn borough of New York, U.S., on Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2020.
Gabby Jones | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Amazon is laying off roughly 110 employees in its Wondery podcast division and the head of the group is leaving as part of a broader reshuffling of the company’s audio unit.
In a Monday note to staffers, Steve Boom, Amazon’s vice president of audio, Twitch and games, said the company is consolidating some Wondery units under its Audible audiobook and podcasting division. Wondery CEO Jen Sargent is also stepping down from her role, Boom said.
“These changes will not only better align our teams as they work to take advantage of the strategic opportunities ahead but, even more crucially, will ensure we have the right structure in place to deliver the very best experience to creators, customers and advertisers,” Boom wrote in the memo, which was viewed by CNBC. “Unfortunately, these changes also include some role reductions, and we have notified those employees this morning.”
The move comes nearly five years after Amazon acquired Wondery as part of a push to expand its catalog of original audio content. The podcasting company made a name for itself with hit shows like “Dirty John” and “Dr. Death.”
More recently, Wondery signed several lucrative licensing deals with Jason and Travis Kelce’s “New Heights” podcast, along with Dax Shepard’s “Armchair Expert.”
Amazon is streamlining “how Wondery further integrates” into the company by separating the teams that oversee its narrative podcasts from those developing “creator-led shows,” Boom wrote.
The narrative podcasting unit will consolidate under Audible, and creator-led content will move to a new unit within Boom’s organization in Amazon called “creator services,” he wrote.
Amazon’s audio pursuits face a heightened challenge from the growing popularity of video podcasts on Alphabet‘s YouTube, which now hosts an increasing number of shows.
Video shows require different discovery, growth and monetization strategies than “audio-first, narrative series,” Boom wrote in the memo to Amazon staffers.
“The podcast landscape has evolved significantly over the past few years,” Boom said.
Baidu will bring its driverless taxis to Europe next year via a partnership with U.S. ridehailing firm Lyft, as the Chinese tech giant looks to expand its autonomous vehicles globally.
The robotaxis will initially be deployed in the U.K. and Germany from 2026 with the aim to have “thousands” of vehicles across Europe in the “following years,” the two companies said.
Lyft has had very little presence in Europe until last week when it closed the acquisition of Germany-based ride hailing company FreeNow, which is available in over 150 cities across nine countries, including Ireland, the U.K., Germany and France.
Deployment of the autonomous cars is “pending regulatory approval,” Lyft and Baidu said in a Monday statement. It’s unclear if Lyft will offer Baidu’s robotaxis via the FreeNow app or another product.
The partnership marks a continued push from Baidu to expand its robotaxis to international markets.
Last month, Baidu partnered with Uber to deploy its autonomous cars on the ride-hailing giant’s platform outside the U.S. and mainland China, with a focus on the Middle East and Asia, which will launch later this year. The partnership also covers Europe, though a launch date for the region has not yet been disclosed.
In China, Baidu has been operating its own robotaxi service since 2021 in major cities like Beijing, allowing users to hail an Apollo Go car through the app. Meanwhile, for Lyft, the deal could boost the firm’s presence in the region as it looks to take on rivals like Uber and Bolt.
Autonomous vehicles have become a big focus for ride-hailing companies which have looked to partner with companies that are developing the technology for driverless cars.