Google expands voluntary buyout offers to employees in five countries

Google has quietly widened its voluntary buyout program beyond the US and UK. The company confirmed to Reuters that it began offering exit packages in June to some employees in Canada, France, Germany, Japan and Switzerland.

The goal is familiar. Google wants to contain rising costs while it pours money into artificial intelligence, and payroll is one of the few line items it can trim politely.

Who got the offer, and who didn’t

The buyouts are voluntary. Eligible employees can take a package and leave, or they can decline and stay.

Not everyone qualifies. The program excludes core AI and cloud units, including Google Cloud and DeepMind.

Reuters could not determine how many employees accepted this latest round. The offers in these five countries had not previously been reported.

Switzerland offers the clearest view of the actual terms. Google employs around 5,000 people there, at what serves as a key engineering hub.

Swiss employees were offered one month’s salary for each year of service, capped at a maximum of 12 months. Someone with five years at the company could walk away with five months of pay. A 15-year veteran would hit the ceiling at 12.

The Swiss timeline moved quickly. Offers went out in mid-June, eligible staff had answers by mid-July, and the first departures began in August.

Shrinking and growing at the same time

Even with buyouts spreading across continents, Alphabet’s headcount keeps going up.

The company had 204,757 employees at the end of September. That is approximately 10,000 more than six months earlier.

Some of that growth came from the acquisition of Wiz.

Meanwhile, the spending side of the ledger is enormous. Google reported capital expenditure of $51.4 billion in the third quarter, mostly directed at AI-related infrastructure.

Background: a program that keeps traveling

This is not Google’s first round of voluntary exits. The company ran similar severance initiatives in the US and UK during 2025.

Google is also not alone. Other large tech companies, including Microsoft, have introduced voluntary exit programs of their own.

Voluntary programs also come with practical advantages in certain countries. Several of the nations on this list, including France and Germany, are known for strong worker protections that can make forced layoffs slow and complicated.

What this means

The scale gap is worth keeping in mind. Severance packages capped at 12 months of salary will not meaningfully dent a $51.4 billion quarterly capex figure.

By walling off Google Cloud and DeepMind, the company is telling investors and employees alike which parts of the business it considers essential.

Google has not disclosed how many people accepted the latest offers.

The next things to watch are whether the program spreads to additional countries and how Alphabet’s headcount trends in coming quarters.