Thank you for articulating this! I'm not accusing everyone of this cluelessness, but many appear to think that Google was looking at financially-trying times,

Thank you for articulating this! I'm not accusing everyone of this cluelessness, but many appear to think that Google was looking at financially-trying times, and fired some employees to save some money -- no, they fired people, and then spent enough money to have kept those folks employed for decades on stock buybacks. Google's layoffs weren't about saving money, but about juicing the stock.