It’s like when you’re annoyed about something local government is doing and you show up with 50 other people also annoyed. Now you’re part of a news story and a stakeholder faction. But you all got there because of your individual desires.

Also, the letter is a public artifact. The investor is also meeting formally and/or informally with Google or individual directors.

It’s not like sending a letter cost them anything, but now they are famous.

But there is no evidence that this change is related to their letter (especially since none of the changes made in this case match any of the specific requests in the letter).

"Google Combines Maps and Waze Teams Amid Pressure to Cut Costs"

"...as the search giant faces pressure to streamline operations and cut costs."

"The activist hedge fund TCI Fund Management called on Alphabet to aggressively cut costs last month, writing in a letter to management that it thought the company’s head count was too high."

Are you suggesting that the WSJ is totally off base by drawing the conclusion that pressure from TCI, via this letter, is not the cause of the restructuring?

What a masterclass in logical fallacies.

The implication of the article is that generally investors think Google is too liberal on spending (anecdotally, I will tell you this sentiment is very real).

The WSJ used a specific and public example of someone putting that into writing, but if you think a non-Top 20 shareholder can convince Google to do something (that Google doesn't believe most of its shareholders want), then you really don't understand how corporate governance works.

Even the more aggressive well-known activists rely on the idea that they can convince more than 51% of shareholders to agree with them

Google is doing this because it thinks the majority of shareholders agree with it, otherwise they'd tell TCI to kick rocks (as often happens with activists, Google knows that no-one can actually buy enough shares to influence their management decisions, unlike some SMID caps.)

I'm glad we agree. That's almost precisely the argument I made throughout this entire thread.

That's a misrepresentation of what the WSJ piece says. All the article is doing there is highlighting that there has been external pressure on Google to cut costs.

The excerpt you highlighted points out TCI's request for reduced headcount, while a few paragraphs earlier, the article says that there is no plan to reduce headcount.

Yes. In fact its off base enough that I don't think they actually make that claim in the article.

TCI holds something like .5% of alphabet market cap, that's less than is held by multiple individual human investors in Google, and likely less than rank-and-file employees hold collectively. It'd be weird to pay any attention to such a group.

Like perhaps there is a pressure to fire people, but Google isn't firing anyone, so they are pretty clearly ignoring said pressure.