Google Voluntary Buyout 2026: Who Is Eligible For Voluntary Exit? 12 Months Package, Severance Payout Details

Google, the largest search engine owned by Alphabet, has expanded its voluntary buyout scheme to employees in countries like Canada, France, Germany, Japan and Switzerland. The new announcement comes after Microsoft's own voluntary buyout offer to at least 60,000 employees. However, as per the media, Google announced its voluntary exit programme in June last year and continued to expand it amidst rising costs for funding artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure and visions. Employees working in India are excluded from the scheme.

Google Voluntary Buyouts: Which Employees Can Apply?

The search engine company confirmed to Reuters that it began offering voluntary exit packages in June to some employees in Canada, France, Germany, Japan ​and Switzerland.

"In 2025, some of our teams introduced a voluntary ⁠exit programme with severance," a Google spokesperson said in a statement. "This past summer, in June, we expanded ​this programme globally in a few countries to support our important work ahead," as cited by Reuters.

Hence, the offer is limited for employees. Employees residing in the below-mentioned countries can seek voluntary exit from Google:

• United States
• United Kingdom
• Canada
• Japan
• Switzerland
• Germany
• France

Google Voluntary Buyouts: Eligibility

The eligibility depends upon -- the country of employment, business division, job functions and whether the employee's position is included in the specific voluntary exit round.

Employees who are excluded from the voluntary buyout options are departments of Google Cloud, Google DeepMind, and Google's large customer sales team.

Google Voluntary Buyout Scheme: Severance Package

As of now, the full details of the severance package to these employees is not revealed. But reports stated that employees in Switzerland were offered up to 12 months of salary for exit. The reports said this would translate to one month of salary for every year of service, capped to the maximum limit of 12 months salary. In this country, Google has about 5,000 employees.

People familiar with the scheme revealed to Reuters that employees began leaving in August after Google offered voluntary exit ​packages in ⁠the country. One even revealed that at least four employees in a team ​of about 50 had accepted the offer.

Does that mean all employees voluntarily exiting would get a 12-month salary in advance? No! The breakdown is:

• One month salary for every year of service.
• The maximum limit of payout is 12 months' salary.
• Employees who have worked for 12 years or more would likely get the maximum severance pay.

The severance package will depend upon the employee's grade and number of years of service.

Example:

• 3 years of service: 3 months' salary.
• 6 years: 6 months' salary.
• 10 years: 10 months' salary.
• 12 or more years: 12 months' salary.
• If an employee has worked for more than 15 years, their severance package would still be maximised to only at 12 months' salary, as not much detail is revealed over this.

As per Alphabet's SEC filing, as of September 30, 2026, the total headcount stood at 204,757 employees, which includes Google Services, Google Cloud and other Alphabet businesses such as Waymo.

Google Layoff Timeline:

Since Covid-19, Google, which was among the top hirers from 2020 to 2022, began reducing its workforce from 2023 through multiple methods. For instance, in 2023 alone, about 12,000 jobs were eliminated, including 200 from Switzerland, followed by multiple rounds of job cuts at engineering, hardware, assistant, cloud and other divisions in 2024.

From 2025 to date, Google has carried targeted job cuts alongside voluntary exit programmes and restructuring.

Year	Layoff activity	Key details
2020	No major company-wide layoffs	Google continued expanding despite COVID-19.
2021	No major company-wide layoffs	Strong hiring and investment in cloud, advertising and engineering.
2022	No major company-wide layoffs	Hiring continued, although management began focusing on efficiency.
2023	Major layoffs	Approximately 12,000 employees announced for elimination (around 6% of workforce).
2024	Multiple rounds	Hundreds of roles eliminated across engineering, hardware, Assistant, Cloud and other divisions.
2025	Targeted reductions	Further job cuts, alongside voluntary exit programmes and restructuring.
2026	Targeted cuts and voluntary exits	Smaller reported workforce reductions and expanded voluntary buyout offers in several countries.

Microsoft Voluntary Buyout Offer:

Last month, Microsoft announced voluntary buyouts of 60,000 employees, a quarter of its workforce, amidst rising AI infrastructure spending. The offer is eligible for employees in Canada, India, the United Kingdom and the United States at level 70 and below. The voluntary exit offer is a one-time limited programme, and employees who choose the offer will exit by December 2026-end.

As per reports, employees who have selected voluntary exit will get severance package based on their grade, location and length of service.