Sigh. Lots, arguably most, of those laid off were tech-adjacent, not necessarily the core-engineering types that would have been doing GSoC.
Plus GSoC is for the youngbloods, the noobs, and getting their feet wet with real code and big orgs. It's a career starter, not a career bastion.
Very many of the 12,000 employees whose jobs were cut were "core-engineering types". I was one of them.
i'm not employed by google, nor have i ever been. GSoC is google paying people to work on open-source stuff, with little direct relation to their profits.