Google's latest layoffs are just the beginning (opens in new tab)

Other than "because we can, and then brag about it" - why the f*ck did Google hire so many people to begin with? Was top management utterly oblivious to how many people were actually [not] needed to run the parts of the biz that mattered? Did they have some "if we hire all the good people, our competition will be ruined by lack of talent" delusion strategy?

I am honestly surprised that they are making these "small" cuts when there are other ways they could save money. For example, from what I can read of the earnings statements, Verily has produced little to no revenue and hasn't really grown significantly over the past decade, while delivering a stream of not really impressive press releases. This seems like a great time to write off Verily by closing it. Similarly, Google X. It can't be cheap to run X and it really doesn't deliver much (also a steady stream of not really impressive press releases) and has some truly kooky off-brand research project (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/11/231117120649.h...)

Going further, I personally would like to see Google Cloud spun off to its own Alphabet company so that Kurian can run it like AWS/Oracle, and: shut down Wing (I thought it was already, but it's not clear), Fiber (yes, it will piss some folks off), and Calico (larry can fund his own immortality projects). Sell off a bunch of real estate.