Google expands voluntary buyouts to 5 more countries after hiring spree: Is India included?

Google has decided to extend its employee buyout offer to several countries as it looks to cut down on other costs as the company continues to spend heavily on artificial intelligence, as per a report by Reuters.

Google, whose parent company is Alphabet, has confirmed to Reuters that it had begun offering voluntary exit packages to its employees based out of Canada, France, Germany, Japan and Switzerland.

"In 2025, some of our teams introduced a voluntary exit program with severance," a Google spokesperson said in a statement to Reuters. "This past summer, in June, we expanded this program globally in a few countries to support our important work ahead."

This move comes as Google and most of the other Big Tech companies are spending heavily on AI, which has gone on to unnerve Wall Street and bring down the stock price of Alphabet. Last week, another tech giant Microsoft, had also offered 60,000 of its employees buyout contracts to try and contain costs.

In recent quarters, the employee count of Alphabet had kept growing, but now it looks like the Sunar Pichai-run company is looking to move their resources to areas that are higher up in the priority ladder.

At the end of September 2026, Google's workforce expanded to 204,757, showing that it had added nearly 10,000 workers in a period of six months. This increased headcount, which was disclosed in the company's third-quarter earnings results, was in stark contrast to its other tech peers who were looking to bring down their number of employees as per their changing business strategies.

Notably, the acquisition of Wiz, a cybersecurity firm, in March this year, had also contributed to the increased in Google employees as they had to absorb 2,000 employees of Wiz.

This latest buyout offer comes after the exit programmes that have been offered to Google employees since last year in some divisions across the US and Britain. This programme has been described as an exit option for employees who no longer feel aligned with the path the company is taking.

As AI and cloud computing become Google's hiring priorities, employees in their Google Cloud as well as the AI unit DeepMind were kept out of the buyout offers issued in the past.

Google's approach in Switzerland

Google has around 5,000 employees in Switzerland, with a major engineering hub of the company located in Zurich.

Exit packages were offered in mid-June and employees were given till mid-July to apply for the same. Those who did, got one month's salary for every year they worked at the company, up to a maximum of 12 months.