I think a big part of this is what happens before that. Google hires lots of people because they think those people will create more value and growth. The reaso

I think a big part of this is what happens before that. Google hires lots of people because they think those people will create more value and growth. The reason it's under pressure to fire them and return money to shareholders is because shareholders no longer think Google is good at creating growth with these investments. Arguably they're right, you could take a look at Google's Ads business and say "Hey! This is fantastic, fire anyone not working on this and just give me a great dividend", it would arguably be better for the shareholders. Now in reality, that swing from "Invest and grow" to "Just return cash" is driven far more by fickle market sentiment than a real solid basis in fact, but that's still the pressure they respond to.