Google has laid off director of news Madhav Chinnappa in the latest round of layoffs at the company. Chinnappa was with the search giant for 13 years. His designation on LinkedIn says: director of news ecosystem development at Google. Chinnapa shared a long post on LinkedIn where he wrote on his highlights of his work at Google and more. He started the post saying that he is “leaving Google as part of the #googlelayoffs”. He also shared his Google Photo ID with the post.

Here’s his LinkedIn post:
I am on gardening leave at the moment which allows too much time to contemplate work, career, life etc. In the end, I am proud of what I have been able to achieve during my almost 13 years at Google from:

– #DigitalNewsInitiative (which wasn’t just a Fund – though a wise person did say that it helped kickstart a European media R&D culture – and the product plus training & research elements never got the credit I thought they deserved!) to
– the #googlenewsinitiative Innovation Challenges
– and of course Ludovic Blecher’s brilliant idea: #JERF, the Journalism Emergency Relief Fund which showcased the best of Google: helping where it could when a vulnerable part of the news ecosystem needed it most and involving ~300 Googlers
– and aside from getting #NewsGeist to go global, I am also inordinately proud of somehow convincing the Doodle team to do a Eurovision Doodle!
(as I seem to have forgotten/lost the ability to insert links, please contact me if you have any questions on anything mentioned above or anything else!)
And to be clear, not a single thing I mentioned above could have been achieved without my teammates and colleagues as everything is a team effort. There are too many to mention but they are a special bunch and I will miss them all!
And what now: I am in the privileged position of being able some time to figure that out. In the near term, I have some pressing family issues that need my fuller attention so in the spirit of the Zen proverb that the tea cup must be empty before it can be full, I will take August off then spend September looking after my mum in India and only start thinking about work in October with a view to doing more things in 2024.
Though if you have any ideas or thoughts, please message me as I am all ears and have more time on my hands now!
Thank you if you made it all the way down here and have a lovely summer and take care – Madhav