It sounds like a gas lighting attempt to paint employees as selfish and entitled children worried about losing their toys. Most people don't care about that stuff, it's all superficial anyway. Things like this usually means employees asking about why benefits are cut for them and not for executives.

Further down in in the article, if readers made it that far, it implies just that:

> Pichai dodged employee questions asking about cost-cutting executive compensation. Pichai brought in total pay last year of $6.3 million, while other top executives made more than $28 million.

The later on:

> Bret Hill, Google's vice president of "total rewards," fielded a question about raises, equity and bonuses and how they will be affected by the changes. He said the company doesn't plan to deviate from paying workers “at the top end of the market so we can be competitive.”

Which leads me to believe employees know what they're talking about, and the swag question near the top is just clickbait. Employees actually want real answers, and they got none.