This is on top of the fact they saw strong growth. The business is by all measures healthy (both Alphabet and Youtube, either you look at is doing well)

Yet the promise of trimming headcount for AI remains too lucrative to pass up?

I don't get it. The first firm that realizes the more people using AI effectively the better the throughput will be, and that means scaling back numbers is ineffective, they should really be hiring or at least keeping headcount the same as it today, and instead focus on increasing the "velocity" of each individuals ability.