Google says it has laid off hundreds of employees working on its hardware, voice assistance and engineering teams as part of cost-cutting measures.

The company said the moves were made as Google aims at “responsibly investing in our company’s biggest priorities and the significant opportunities ahead.”

Google earlier said it was eliminating a few hundred roles, with most of the impact on its augmented reality hardware team.

The cuts follow pledges by executives of Google and its parent company Alphabet to reduce costs.

In January 2023, Google said it would lay off 12,000 employees or around 6% of its workforce.

The Washington state attorney general is expected to file a lawsuit seeking to block the proposed merger between Kroger Co. and Albertsons Cos. as soon as Thursday afternoon, according to a person familiar with the plan.

The lawsuit is expected to be filed in state court, said the person, who asked not to be named discussing an ongoing investigation.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission and a group of other states that are also probing the deal aren’t involved in the Washington state lawsuit, the person said.

Any lawsuit by the FTC would likely be filed in federal court.

The Washington attorney general’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

There’s no relief in sight for U.S. car owners who’ve faced soaring costs of maintaining a vehicle in the past two years.

Prices of motor-vehicle insurance rose 20.3% in December from a year earlier, the biggest jump since 1976, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That was the 16th straight month of annual gains exceeding 10%.

And insurance rates will probably keep on rising, propelled by higher costs of replacement parts and repairs, Bloomberg Intelligence analysts said last month.

Prices of used cars and trucks have come down from their peaks two years ago.

But the December consumer-price index released Thursday showed an uptick in used-vehicle costs from the previous month, defying economists forecasts for a decline.

The surprise monthly increase in that category was among the main drivers of a acceleration in the overall rate of inflation.

Even after a drop in 2023, used-vehicle prices remain up 38% since the start of the pandemic.

As for new cars and trucks, prices are not increasing nearly as much as they did in 2022.

On an annual basis, they were up only 1% in December.