Cost center / profit center paradigm shouldn't be applied to companies like Google who hire engineers just to possess them. The whole company except for ads is basically a highly-paid cost center.
Many things go into the ads infrastructure that make it actually able to run in a profitable way, spanner, borg, and much more. So this doesn't really narrow things down.
it does if you know enough about the business. where can you squeeze more money out in the short term -- infra cost savings or building a better mouse trap? as a non googler i have no idea but i would imagine leadership does and that will drive layoff decisions.
I guess they decided they didn't need to possess as many? Even Google isn't hiring just because. They hire because someone leader wrote a doc and justified a line item to staff something and pay for the infra to make it go. What I said doesn't change at Google. Look at the areas of these big tech layoffs, they align with my premise.