I am saying that this move is largely unrelated to the TCI memo. The WSJ article goes further:
>In September, Mr. Pichai said he wanted Google to become 20% more productive and indicated the company could merge teams working on overlapping products.
TCI's memo highlights five areas they think need to be adjusted, none of which Alphabet acquiesced to with this restructuring.
To be frank: don't know, don't care, and I don't need to have an answer to that question in order to be able to disagree with your original point. You came to this thread telling Googlers that the blame for this lies with TCI. I was curious, so I read TCI's memo and the WSJ piece. Now that I've done so, I simply find your assertion far-fetched, for these differences:
TCI
- Sent letter to Alphabet in mid-November
- Holds a mere .5% of Alphabet's market cap
- Asked for headcount reduction
- Asked Alphabet to pay employees less
Alphabet
- Publicly commented in September that they intended to combine overlapping groups
- Combined overlapping groups
- Didn't lay anyone off
That's it. At this point, given your slightly elevated tone in your most recent responses, it's starting to feel as though you began commenting with an axe to grind, and are now left holding an axe but are unsure what you should do with it. Maybe just put it down?
The genesis here was me keying off of related phrases within the WSJ piece:
"...Amid Pressure to Cut Costs"
"...faces pressure to streamline operations and cut costs"
Ok, great. So, my question is where is this pressure coming from?
"The activist hedge fund TCI Fund Management called on Alphabet to aggressively cut costs last month, writing in a letter to management that it thought the company’s head count was too high"
This is the WSJ suggesting that there is a link (granted they do not give confidence intervals) between these things. You could argue that perhaps WSJ is just poorly suggesting that there is a general "background radiation" of "pressure" related to Google.
So it's not like I'm just fabricating this link :)
But since you asked, the larger point and the particular axe I have to grind (that is permanently attached to my hand) is that investors have more power than the collective google employees do, do not have employee interests in mind at all, and Google management and the board will always align with investors NOT employees.
1. Google did the Waze Maps/Maps merger to appease TCI so they could prevent layoffs
2. The Waze Maps/Maps merger is unrelated to the TCI memo