Google has been offering some staff in Canada, France, Germany, Japan, and Switzerland voluntary exit packages since June, according to Reuters, which Google confirmed. The offers extend a program Google started in 2025 for some US and UK divisions, and like those earlier rounds, they appear to leave out Google Cloud and DeepMind, which its CFO has named as hiring priorities. In Switzerland, where Google has about 5,000 employees, staff who took the deal got one month of pay per year of service, capped at 12 months, and started leaving in August. In at least one division, Google has followed its buyout offers with layoffs. Alphabet’s headcount still grew by about 10,000 between March and September, to 204,757.
