~175,000 employees. They can probably run the company just fine with tens of thousands fewer employees. But, when it comes to productivity / profitability, it really doesn't seem so bad, frankly; consider:
2018 operating income margin: 22.9% ($31.4b op income)
2021 operating income margin: 30.5% ($78.7b op income)
And they nearly doubled sales in three years, from 2018 at $136.8b in sales to $257b at the end of fiscal 2021. That's something beyond astounding for a company so big.
This reeks of Sundar and top management worrying about their jobs, trying too hard to please Wall Street.
they increased operating revenues in part by making Search results unusable, decreasing the quality of search results to drive more ad impressions and clicks. Ads themselves have been optimized to blend in with organic traffic, taking over the page, to drive more revenue.
FWIW I think Page and Brin have retained voting control of the company through some differentiated class of common shares. So Sundar is probably more interested in pleasing them than some Wall Street analysts.
Yeah this is what is frustrating internally. The company is still ludicrously profitable. Just not as much as last year. But it isn't like in 2019 there were big disruptive cuts and massive wrenches thrown into hiring plans. This isn't a "oh boy we don't have enough runway and need to do something fast" thing that startups or unprofitable unicorns run into. Instead this is "the stock market will be angry if they see lower margins."
2018 operating income margin: 22.9% ($31.4b op income)
2021 operating income margin: 30.5% ($78.7b op income)
And they nearly doubled sales in three years, from 2018 at $136.8b in sales to $257b at the end of fiscal 2021. That's something beyond astounding for a company so big.
This reeks of Sundar and top management worrying about their jobs, trying too hard to please Wall Street.