> it's not to increase productivity, it's to increase compliance and push down salary bands.

Its as if someone has forgotten that they can increase revenue instead.

Which one is easier for executives, particularly during a recession?

fair point, short-termism is so ick and its such little thinking.

Google doesn't have a revenue problem and hasn't since its IPO. For the past 15 years they've made the stockmarket happy by somehow magically conjuring increases in ad revenues every single quarter. It's a mind boggling firehose of money that just never seemed like it would stop increasing in intensity.

It still hasn't stopped, though it may have slowed a bit in its increase. But there's no danger on the revenue front. Just danger on stock price, because investors really want Number Go Up continually.

So the moves last week were really about making investors think Google is Doing Something and exercising downward pressure on wages.

Its a sector-wide move to put downward pressure on wages and bargaining power, and Google is only a small part of it.