In November last year, Google’s share price hit an eye-watering $744 per share. Today, it sits at $541, a significant drop that has wiped billions of its value (it is currently worth a mere $172 billion).
The drop represents the end of one of the most spectacular share price rises in history. But could it also end Google’s two-year reign as Fortune magazine’s “best company to work for”?
Like many Silicon Valley success stories, Google has showered its employees with perks such as on-site dry cleaning facilities, free meals, subsidised exercise classes and low-cost childcare.
Many commentators have pointed out that these perks have traditionally lasted only as long as quarterly revenues exceed forecasts. But Google has always claimed it was different.
Last year, at the Silicon Valley Comes to Oxford event, Google evangelist and head of special inititatives, Chris Sacca, told a group students, investors and journalists that the search engine really, really valued its employees and this was the way it intended to keep them, regardless of the cost.
But a cool wind must be blowing through the company’s headquarters today with the publication of a story in the New York Times suggesting that things are changing. Google, it seems, is no longer willing to subsidize childcare to the tune of $37,000 per child and parents, perhaps not unreasonably, have been told they will have to pay more.
Should the share price fall further, Google’s employees may well face further life-threatening cutbacks. How long before they look back fondly at the days of free M&Ms and unlimited mineral water?
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