They grew from ~40k employees to ~70k employees in the past 3 years... that's just too much hiring. Regardless of how well or poor the state of the economy is, slowing employee growth is probably the smart move.
1. Do folks think they are extending it because they are still working on a long term plan, or do they already have a plan but need more time to organize to execute layoffs or other cost saving measures? The warnings about worker productivity seemed a bit foreboding.
2. Are other companies having hiring freezes out of caution and fear, looking at market leaders like Google and following suit, or are actual, realized financial issues causing hiring freezes in tech?
The vast majority of tech companies having hiring freezes or layoffs are the ones that overexpanded post-pandemic. You throw money at people when the money is good, and the hose dries up during a recession.
I believe both reasons may be valid. Although with all of the world happenings, I figured the C suite was having a summit of sorts to figure out where they are and where they would like to go.
Without knowing a lot about the situation. My hunch is that Google is being very proactive. They know that bad times are ahead and that d(Net Profit) / dEmployee is negative. But they aren't in any sort of distress.