Hiring tens of thousands of people is a very high level strategic decision. No one on the ground-level would have any special insight into it. The people on the Android team probably didn&#x27;t know why Eric Schmidt authorized hiring a bunch more employees after returning from an exciting Apple board meeting, they were just happy to hire help.<p>A small fraction of Google&#x27;s employees are responsible for all of its revenue.<p>They use those profits to help ensure their longevity. One way to do that is to keep people from competing with them, so they liberally hire and attempt to acquire anyone that&#x27;s a potential threat.<p>It&#x27;s not the only reason they hire so many people. Wall Street rewards headcount and tech companies have such great profit margins that it actually makes a lot of sense. What else are they going to do with all those profits?