Even so - I don't have a moral objection to profit motive, I just think they're going about it wrong.
There is one large shift happening now in the industry, to AI. Google will need tons of talent to rise to the challenge. There have been other such shifts before (social, mobile). In the past, Google handled these shifts very differently, by retraining and reorganizing engineering staff, which had for the most part been hired for its generalist ability and could therefore jump to other areas. The theory was that there wasn't a need to know the domain too much, since you were going to reinvent it anyways. It worked exceptionally well for a lot of things. People there didn't build data centers using techniques from the field, they didn't build maps like ESRI or Navteq, etc.
Now it seems to handle it differently, through layoffs that give their employees clear signals that the company will look outside for talent first. Employees are no longer valued as adaptable generalist hires but as narrow-function cogs.
That's a strategic mistake, because the AI field is still so nascent and full of hacks that generalists able to handle novel challenges in innovative ways are so sorely needed. It isn't a mature space at all and outside hires - at the scale that will be needed - will almost certainly be of lower quality and productivity.
What would make sense if they wanted to increase profits: routinely cut low performers to keep people motivated to do their best, and completely drop entire business lines that are losses for the company. It doesn't seem like either thing is happening. By their own admission, it's not the lowest performers that get cut ("role eliminations"), and businesses that cause losses are expected to continue operating with less staff. Staff cuts don't fix structurally lossy businesses, they just make them limp longer. It seems like it's setting up these businesses for a long and painful agony.