What's weirder is that a large chunk of expenses for these companies is stock-based compensation for employees, and then they cancel it out by doing buybacks. Maybe try just handing out cash?
I think the idea is to align the financial incentives of the employee with the financial incentives of the company. Some companies (usually pre-revenue ones) might also do it to reduce cash expenses, but that seems unlikely to be Google's motivation in this case for the reason you pointed out.
a) jurisdiction dependent, it's a bigger company than the US.
b) if they issue RSU's at $Y, then buyback stock to drive the price up to $Z, the employee's take $Y as ordinary income, and $Z-$Y as cap gains, which is usually taxed more favourably
Mostly because they are used by party donors and other wealthy people who "influence" politicians. When everyone gets paid in dividends, they'll find different mechanism for the wealthy to extract money and tax dividends just like any other income.
