Do you actually believe this to be the case? Why on Earth would Google do this? You are not privy to either the list of employees who were let go or their historical performance reviews, so at best this is just a hunch you have. Ask yourself if it's a hunch that makes sense.
Sundar is never going to actively cast shade on the people he just let go, but he did emphatically say "the process was far from random".
I know this local to my org. I can say first-hand that most low performers from the current and prior cycles were not impacted by the layoffs, while people who were high performers in the current and/or prior cycles were impacted by the layoffs. The experiences of other people managers within the company (and at Amazon and Microsoft) agree with this.
I don't want to get too into Kremlinology, because I don't have enough data to say for sure how people in my org were selected beyond "performance wasn't a major consideration". But there is definite high-level tilt towards cutting people from certain areas in the company (parts of maps and devices were hit hard, most of cloud was barely impacted).
My own anecdata confirms that /only/ low performers or people working on projects that should never have existed to begin with were let go.
For example, one friend mentioned that someone on his team was let go while they were on call and actively handling a security incident.
Another person had two people critical to their project laid off. They didn't cut the whole team, just the two most critical people. Regardless, that team is kinda up shit creek now, but still employed by Google.