"the company" is it's investors, or the will of the majority of the investors, at least.
A company does not have agency or free will.
Google "emergence".
Google has split voting and non-voting shares. Larry and Sergey have majority control over the company.
they are technically owners of the company. so yes. that is what activist investors do.
Or they heard google is already planning to do it (which a lot of ppl heard too) and trying to get ahead of it in the news cycle
Who has heard it? The rumors presented in the article are about the renaming of the performance review system, not actual evidence or even rumoring of layoffs.
This system was announced in like March. Nothing about it has changed since then.