Or... (Score 3, Informative)

...Google just wants to ensure that their employees don't cause contractors to be reclassified as Full-Time Employees by the IRS. This is a very common issue and is of particular focus for the IRS currently. If you've paid someone as a contractor/1099 and the IRS audits your payroll taxes, Google would owe the "unpaid" payroll taxes (7.5%) plus penalties. Here is information about employee classification: https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/u... In addition to the items listed, thing like including them in all company meetings, giving bonuses, giving direct/day-to-day instruction are all things that companies have to do in order to avoid this issue. The penalty is assessed against one year of the person's wages if they're reclassified. This helps limit the damage as, even if a contractor has worked for 20 years at a company that should have been treating them as an FTE, they'll only assess back payroll taxes and penalties on that one year. All that said, I'm not saying I agree with what Google is doing - they could certainly afford to hire FTEs - but this strikes me as good policy given the regulatory environment around this issue.