Technology giant Google has announced plans to undergo several cost-cutting measures, including ending its enterprise subscription to the Financial Times. According to several sources, the media house is not the only one on the list, with the recent cuts reflecting broader efforts by the company to cut costs. Google has been implementing several cost reductions across 2025, including the removal of 35% of managers who oversaw teams of at least three people. “Right now, we have 35% fewer managers, with fewer direct reports” than at this time a year ago, said Brian Welle, vice president of people analytics and performance, according to audio of a meeting reviewed by CNBC. “So a lot of fast progress there.” Google begins cost reduction measures Google has also been offering voluntary exit programs across several divisions since January. Finance chief Anat Ashkenazi mentioned late last year that the company will continue to push for more cost cuts, a development that has remained unchanged despite Alphabet seeing a strong Q2 2025, with $496.4 billion in revenue. These cuts may save thousands for Google, but they also come at a time when the company is facing strained relationships with publishers. According to August data from the trade association Digital Content Next, median referral traffic from Google Search to publishers dropped by 10% between May and June 2025, with non-new brands seeing a drop of 14%. In a report submitted by SimilarWeb, major outlets, including Business Insider, CNN, and HuffPost, have seen sharper traffic drops of 30%, 40%, and 40%, respectively. Publishers have attributed the drops to the company’s AI Overview feature, which has seen its click-throughs to external websites reduce from 56% to 69% since its launch, according to data from Pew Research. This spring, Pew mentioned that it analyzed data from 900 United States adults, with about six in ten seeing an AI-generated summary when they conducted at least a Google Search in March 2025. Publishers criticize AI web crawling activities As previously reported by Cryptopolitan earlier this month, Neil Vogel, the CEO of People, did not hold back in his criticism of Google. The CEO of the largest digital and print publisher in the United States called the tech company a “bad actor” and accused it of using the same bot to crawl websites for its search engine as it does to support its AI features. “Google has one crawler, which means they use the same crawler for their search, where they still send us traffic, as they do for their AI products, where they steal our content,” said Vogel. Vogel claimed that Google Search represented more than 65% of People’s traffic, but the number has since dropped to around 20%. He also shared an AdExchanger statistic, which claimed that as of several years ago, Google accounts for about 90% of the platform’s traffic from the open web. “I’m not complaining. We’ve grown our audience. We’ve grown our revenue,” Vogel told conference attendees. “We’re doing great. What is not right about this is: You cannot take our content to compete with us.” In a scathing op-ed written this summer, Digital Content Next CEO Jason King mentioned that Google’s AI overviews were creating what he described as a “zero-click” environment where all traffic dead ends at Google. In his post, Kint claimed that it is not a call for special treatment, as he wants to preserve the integrity of the open web. “We must ensure that the same AI “answers” users see at the top of Google Search don’t become a free substitute for the original work they’re based on,” he said. Join Bybit now and claim a $50 bonus in minutes
