Google CEO Sundar Pichai speaks during the Google I/O keynote session at Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California on May 7, 2019.
Josh Edelson | AFP | Getty Images
Google’s mixed messaging when it comes to its return-to-office plans has been a subject of consternation across the company since the waning days of the pandemic. Now employees are finding further sources of frustration.
Last week Google updated its hybrid three-day-a-week office policy to include badge tracking, and noted that attendance will be included in performance reviews. Additionally, employees who already received approval for remote work may now have that status reevaluated.
Based on CNBC’s discussions with some employees and posts to an internal site called Memegen, Google faces growing concern among staffers that management is overreaching in its oversight of physical attendance and that they’re being treated like schoolchildren. There’s also increased uncertainty about what the future holds for people who moved to different cities and states after they were cleared to work from remote locations.
“If you cannot attend the office today, your parents should submit an absence request,” reads one top-rated meme posted by an employee and viewed by CNBC. Attached was a photoshopped image of human resources head Fiona Cicconi in front of a school chalkboard.
Another highly-rated meme said “check my work, not my badge.”
Ryan Lamont, a Google spokesperson, said in an email that the badge data collected is “aggregated” for company leaders.
“Now that we’ve fully transitioned to the hybrid work week, company leaders can see reports showing how their teams are adopting the hybrid work model,” the statement said, adding that Google doesn’t “share individual Googler badge data” in its reports.
An internal document indicates how group leaders will learn who hasn’t been in the office frequently enough.
“Managers of non-remote Googlers who have been consistently absent from the office will be cc’ed on emails to these Googlers (subject to local requirements), so they can support Googlers in either ramping back to the office or exploring other flexibility options,” the document says.
On Friday, YouTube held its own all-hands meeting with employees about the office policy update. At the event, executives presented the plans virtually, a paradox that didn’t go unnoticed.
Afterwards, a popular meme showed an image of “The Big Bang Theory” TV show character Leonard Hofstadter, saying “What are you looking at? You’ve never seen a hypocrite before?”
Discontent surrounding the RTO policies represents the latest challenge for Google as the company tries to get people back into its many expansive offices and campuses across the country. Prior to the pandemic, Google was known for its vibrant campus life, replete with massage parlors, yoga classes, video games and free gourmet meals.
But life changed, as did priorities, during the pandemic, when offices were closed and employees were forced to work from home. Staffers moved to different cities and got used to more flexibility and family time while taking advantage of Google’s flexible remote work options.
Ruth Porat, Alphabet CFO, at the WEF in Davos, Switzerland on May 23rd, 2022.
Adam Galica | CNBC
Tech companies flourished during that stretch. Google’s revenue growth surged and its stock price rose to record levels. Much of that was attributable to a wide array of cloud-based collaboration tools that could be used from anywhere.
“Thanks to amazing tools like Google Workspace, we can be highly productive from home — particularly when it comes to asynchronous work that requires deep focus,” Cicconi and Alphabet finance chief Ruth Porat wrote in a memo last week announcing updates to the hybrid policy.
In April of last year, Google began bringing most employees back to physical offices three days a week, following a number of fits and starts in its RTO plans that were complicated by regular spikes in Covid infection rates.
However, with attendance remaining sparse and Google looking to cut costs, the company started instituting changes this year that haven’t always been applauded. For example, CNBC reported in February that Google’s cloud unit told employees that it would transition to a desk-sharing workspace in its five largest locations as it downsized real estate.
Now, according to correspondence viewed by CNBC, the company is in the process of providing lockers in each location that uses the desk-sharing model so employees can store personal items overnight.
Chris Schmidt, a software engineer at Google and a member of the Alphabet Workers Union-CWA, questioned how the company can work so hard to get people back in the office when desk space is limited.
“New York City workers do not even have enough desks and conference rooms for workers to use comfortably,” Schmidt said in an email to CNBC.
Google is far from alone among its tech peers in struggling to find the right path forward with hybrid work. Last month, thousands of Amazon employees walked off the job, calling on the company to reconsider its three-day-a-week office mandate. Salesforce is reportedly offering to pay $10 a day to the local charity of choice for every employee that comes back to the office. And Meta said recently that employees will need to work from a physical office at least three days a week beginning in September.
Lamont said that Google’s three-day policy has been in place for over a year and is now being updated.
“It’s going well, and we want to see Googlers connecting and collaborating in-person, so we’re limiting remote work to exception only,” Lamont said.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Apple CEO Tim Cook shake hands on the day they present Apple’s announcement of a $100 billion investment in U.S. manufacturing, in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., August 6, 2025.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
Apple shares rose 13% this week, its largest weekly gain in more than five years, after CEO Tim Cook appeared with President Donald Trump in the White House on Wednesday.
Shares of the iPhone maker rose 4% to close at $229.35 per share on Friday for the company’s largest weekly gain since July 2020. The week’s move added over $400 billion to Apple’s market cap, which now sits at $3.4 trillion.
At the White House on Wednesday, Cook appeared with Trump to announce Apple’s plans to spend $100 billion on American companies and American parts over the next four years.
Apple’s plans to buy more American chips pleased Trump, who said during the public meeting that because the company was building in the U.S., it would be exempt from future tariffs that could double the price of imported chips.
Investors had worried that some of Trump’s tariffs could substantially hurt Apple’s profitability. Apple warned in July that it expected over $1 billion in tariff costs in the current quarter, assuming no changes.
“Apple and Tim Cook delivered a masterclass in managing uncertainty after months and months of overhang relative to the potential challenges the company could face from tariffs,” JP Morgan analyst Samik Chatterjee wrote on Wednesday. He has an overweight rating on Apple’s stock.
Cook’s successful White House meeting also comes two weeks after Apple reported June quarter earnings in which overall revenue jumped 10% and iPhone sales grew by 13%.
In an aerial view, the Tesla headquarters is seen in Austin, Texas, on July 24, 2025.
Brandon Bell | Getty Images
Tesla has been granted a permit to run a ride-hailing business in Texas, allowing the electric vehicle maker to compete against companies including Uber and Lyft.
Tesla Robotaxi LLC is licensed to operate a “transportation network company” until August 6, 2026, according to a listing on the website of the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, or TDLR. The permit was issued this week.
Elon Musk’s EV company has been running a limited ride-hailing service for invited riders in Austin since late June. The select few passengers have mostly been social media influencers and analysts, including many who generate income by posting Tesla fan content on platforms like X and YouTube.
The Austin fleet consists of Model Y vehicles equipped with Tesla’s latest partially automated driving systems. The company has been operating the cars with a valet, or human safety supervisor in the front passenger seat tasked with intervening if there are issues with the ride. The vehicles are also remotely supervised by employees in an operations center.
Musk, who has characterized himself as “pathologically optimistic,” said on Tesla’s earnings call last month that he believes Tesla could serve half of the U.S. population by the end of 2025 with autonomous ride-hailing services.
The Texas permit is the first to enable Tesla to run a “transportation network company.” TDLR said Friday that this kind of permit lets Tesla operate a ride-hailing business anywhere in the state, including with “automated motor vehicles,” and doesn’t require Tesla to keep a human safety driver or valet on board.
Tesla didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
As CNBC previously reported, Tesla robotaxis were captured on camera disobeying traffic rules in and around Austin after the company started its pilot program. None of the known incidents have been reported as causing injury or serious property damage, though they have drawn federal scrutiny.
In one incident, Tesla content creator Joe Tegtmeyer reported that his robotaxi failed to stop for a train crossing signal and lowering gate-arm, requiring a Tesla employee on board to intervene. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has discussed this incident with Tesla, a spokesperson for the regulator told CNBC by email.
Texas has historically been more permissive of autonomous vehicle testing and operations on public roads than have other states.
A new law signed by Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott goes into effect this year that will require AV makers to get approval from the state before starting driverless operations. The new law also gives the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles the authority to revoke permits if AV companies and their cars aren’t complying with safety standards.
Tesla’s AV efforts have faced a number of challenges across the country, including federal probes, product liability lawsuits and recalls following injurious or damaging collisions that occurred while drivers were using the company’s Autopilot and FSD (Full Self-Driving) systems.
A jury in a federal court in Miami last week determined that Tesla should hold 33% of the liability for a fatal Autopilot-involved collision.
And the California DMV has sued Tesla, accusing it of false advertising around its driver assistance systems. Tesla owners manuals say the Autopilot and FSD features in their cars are “hands on” systems that require a driver ready to steer or brake at any time. But Tesla and Musk have shared statements through the years saying that a Tesla can “drive itself.”
Since 2016, Musk has been promising that Tesla would soon be able to turn all of its existing EVs into fully autonomous vehicles with a simple, over-the-air software update. In 2019, he said the company would put 1 million robotaxis on the road by 2020, a claim that helped him raise $2 billion at the time from institutional investors.
Those promises never materialized and, in the robotaxi market, Tesla lags way behind competitors like Alphabet’s Waymo in the U.S. and Baidu’s Apollo Go in China.
Tesla shares are down 18% this year, by far the worst performance among tech’s megacaps.
Shares of The Trade Desk plummeted almost 40% on Friday and headed for their worst day on record after the ad-tech company announced the departure of its CFO and analysts expressed concerns about rising competition from Amazon.
The Trade Desk, which went public in 2016, suffered its steepest prior drop in February, when the shares fell 33% on a revenue miss. In its second-quarter earnings report late Thursday, the company beat expectations on earnings and revenue, but the results failed to impress investors.
The Trade Desk, which specializes in providing technology to companies that want to target users across the web, said finance chief Laura Schenkein is leaving the job and being replaced by Alex Kayyal, who has been working as a partner at Lightspeed Ventures.
While some analysts were uneasy about the sudden change in the top finance role, the bigger concern is Amazon’s growing role in the online ad market, as well as the potential impact of President Donald Trump’s tariffs on ad spending.
Amazon has emerged as a significant player in the digital advertising market in recent years, and is now third behind Google and Meta. Last week, Amazon reported a 23% increase in ad revenue for the second quarter to $15.7 billion, which beat estimates.
Read more CNBC Amazon coverage
Amazon’s ad business has largely been tied to its own platforms, with brands paying up so they can get discovered on the sprawling marketplace. However, Amazon’s demand-side platform (DSP), which allows brands to programmatically place ads across a wider swath of internet properties, is gaining more resonance in the market.
“Amazon is now unlocking access to traditionally exclusive ‘premium’ ad inventory across the open internet, validating the strength of its DSP and suggesting The Trade Desk’s value proposition could erode over time,” Wedbush analysts wrote on Friday.
The Wedbush analysts lowered their rating on The Trade Desk to the equivalent of hold from buy, and cited Amazon’s recent ad integration with Disney as a sign of the company’s aggressiveness.
Executives at The Trade Desk were asked about Amazon on the call, and responded by suggesting that the companies don’t really compete, emphasizing that Amazon is conflicted because it will always prioritize its own properties.
“A scaled independent DSP like The Trade Desk becomes essential as we help advertisers buy across everything and that we have to do that without conflict or compromise,” CEO Jeff Green said on the call. “It is my understanding that Amazon nearly doubled the supply of Prime Video inventory in the recent months. That creates a number of conflicts.”
For the second quarter, The Trade Desk reported a 19% increase in year-over-year revenue to $694 million, topping the $685 million estimate, according to analysts polled by LSEG. Adjusted earnings per share of 41 cents beat estimates by a penny.
Looking to the third quarter, the Trump administration’s tariffs were also a theme, as the company forecast revenue of at least $717 million, representing growth of 14% at minimum.
“From a macro standpoint, some of the world’s largest brands are absolutely facing pressure and some amount of uncertainty,” Green said. “Some have to respond more than others to tariffs. Many are managing inflation worries and the related pricing that comes with that.”
With Friday’s slump, The Trade Desk shares are now down 53% for the year, while the S&P 500 is up about 9%. The Trade Desk was added to the S&P 500 in June.