It's a failure of creativity and leadership if they can't think of something productive to do with their world class talent and infrastructure.

Google never had layoffs before 2022, so maybe they did?

Regardless of anything else a layoff at Google is an admission that the leadership team have nothing for those people to do that's worth keeping them around for. They're 'dead weight' because Google's ideas, ambitions, and taste for audacious ground-breaking projects have died as well. We should all be a little sad about that.