Do you remember the movie "Back to the Future"? I mean the second part. Here, employees were simply fired with a fax that simply said "fired".
Google, or Alphabet, is doing the same thing. On Friday, a mail is sent saying: "You are fired". But if you weren't in the company on Friday and don't read your emails, you'll be standing in front of closed doors on Monday. [1]
Google? Weren't they the innovative ones who treated their employees so great? That was before consultants and business economists overran the place. So Mc Kinsey people just, you know!
I would even go so far as to say that something like this was long overdue. From a technical point of view, after the search engine, there was no other innovation that was not bought or even stolen. And what Google "does" there with its (over)graduated engineers is mostly the management of bought or stolen goods that was done by People ouside before. Consolidation at the lower levels was and is inevitable.