Google parent Alphabet stated it added 12,765 people in Q3, including 2,600 people as part of its Mandiant acquisition, to take its total employee base to 186,779 people across the world.

Alphabet chief executive and Google Ceo Sundar Pichai said on October 25 that they plan to moderate their pace of hiring in Q4 of 2022 and the forthcoming year 2023 as the company’s Q3 revenue grew at its slowest pace in more than two years, indicating a continued slowdown of the online advertising market.

Google parent Alphabet stated it added 12,765 people in Q3, including 2,600 people as part of its Mandiant acquisition, to take its total employee base to 186,779 people across the world.

Alphabet Inc. CFO Ruth Porat said during the call that the “headcount additions (in Q4) will slow to less than half the number added in Q3″. However, they will continue hiring “for critical roles, particularly focused on top engineering and technical talent”.

Pichai mentioned that they have begun a push to drive efficiency by realigning resources to invest in their “biggest growth opportunities” and shifting away from several lower-priority efforts in the past quarter. This includes shuttering its game streaming service google Stadia and canceling its next Pixelbook laptop, besides dissolving the team building the device.

Alphabet reported a net income of $13.9 billion for the quarter, registering a 26.5 percent decline from $18.9 billion from a year-ago quarter.

Revenues saw a 6 percent increase to $69.1 billion for the quarter, a notable slowdown against a 41 percent growth a year earlier as advertisers pulled back spending in certain areas such as financial services including insurance, loan, mortgage, and Cryptocurrency or cryptocurrencies.

Video-sharing platform YouTube also witnessed a drop in its advertising revenue to $7.07 billion for the quarter, from $7.2 billion in the same quarter last year, marking its first decline since the tech giant started disclosing the platform’s financial performance in 2020.

Google’s search revenues increased by 4 percent year-over-year to $39.5 billion, led by travel and retail categories while the overall advertising business rose to $54.5 billion, a 2.5 percent increase year-over-year.