San Francisco, Jan 18 (IANS): Google CEO Sundar Pichai has reportedly warned employees to brace themselves for more job cuts this year.

Google, which has let go over a thousand employees across various departments in the last one week or so, is likely to go for more job cuts, reports The Verge, citing an internal memo.

“We have ambitious goals and will be investing in our big priorities this year,” Pichai told employees in the memo.

"The reality is that to create the capacity for this investment, we have to make tough choices,” he added.

In the memo, Pichai said that latest “role eliminations are not at the scale of last year’s reductions, and will not touch every team”.

“But I know it’s very difficult to see colleagues and teams impacted,” the Google CEO added.

The layoffs this year are about “removing layers to simplify execution and drive velocity in some areas”.

“Many of these changes are already announced, though to be upfront, some teams will continue to make specific resource allocation decisions throughout the year where needed, and some roles may be impacted,” Pichai further wrote.

After laying off nearly 1,000 employees last week, Google is also reportedly slashing “a few hundred” more jobs in its advertising sales team as part of an ongoing restructuring exercise.

Philipp Schindler, Google's chief business officer, told staff in a memo that the fresh job cuts “were the result of changes to how Google's sales team operated”, Business Insider reported.

A Google spokesperson also confirmed that “a few hundred roles globally are being eliminated” as part of the restructuring.

In January last year, Google cut its workforce by 12,000 people, or around 6 per cent of its full-time employees.