An excerpt from an article titled "Tech giants are bracing for a possible recession" published on July 23 on the Washington Post website reads as follows.

　　Tech giants are bracing for a recession and an uncertain future. This, in turn, is leading to more worries about the economy.

　　Some of the biggest tech companies - most of which will report quarterly earnings next week - have recently hinted that they are headed downhill. News of layoffs and slower hiring is everywhere in Silicon Valley. Startups say funding is drying up. Employees are being told companies are restructuring.

　　Meanwhile, Twitter's long-running "tussle" with Elon Musk has gone to court, and the outcome is not yet known. This is also the company's disappointing earnings report on the 22nd mentioned a reason. Amazon is facing a growing union movement, while Facebook is facing a new advertising environment. Regulators at home and abroad are threatening to crack down on the industry.

　　Shares of social media company Snapple Inc. fell nearly 40 percent on the 22nd, after the company reported lower-than-expected revenue growth on the 21st and declined to forecast future profits because of "uncertainties related to the operating environment.

　　Nifty, which lost its subscribers, again this week cited "slow economic growth" and other factors.

　　Analysts predict that data to be released next week by Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Apple could be the clearest signal yet on how these companies will respond to the situation in the coming months. Bloomberg News has already reported this week that Apple has slowed the pace of hiring and spending, causing major stock indexes to move lower.

　　Tom Essay, president of SevenPoint Market Reports Research, said, "The basic logic of the market when it sees this news is, 'Oh, my God, if even they're doing this, what about companies that aren't as strong?'"

　　Tracy Clayton, a spokeswoman for Metaverse Platforms, said the company will continue to make changes to some of its operations because of the general economic climate.

　　The hiring moratoriums and pessimistic forecasts given by tech companies stand in stark contrast to the reputation these companies have traditionally enjoyed for unrestrained growth, which has raised concerns among some economists and Wall Street investors. Over the past decade, technology companies have grown rapidly, employing tens of thousands of people and amassing huge cash reserves through growing profits. Shares of companies such as Amazon, Microsoft, Apple and Google have soared, dominating the major stock exchanges and making many investors rich.

　　As the world's most valuable companies, they also greatly influence how people view the economy, in part because of the nature of their business, which relies on consumer clicks and spending. Any decline in demand for toilet paper sold on Amazon's platform, Tesla cars or iPhones, and any decrease in ads placed on Instagram or Google's search engine trying to sell new shoes or headphones, is sure to spark unrest in other areas.

　　In recent months, the tech industry has been signaling to investors that the boom is coming to an end - Amazon was one of the first tech giants to warn earlier this year that it had hired too many warehouse workers and overestimated customer demand. Consumer demand began to decline as the economy came out of epidemic mode after preventive and control measures were lifted and spending habits changed.

　　Tesla Motors Inc. reported higher-than-expected earnings on the 20th, but the company's CEO Musk and other executives were also grilled by analysts during the conference call. Musk had previously said that he "felt very bad" about the economy and expected Tesla to lay off 10 percent of its salaried workers.

　　Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Google's parent company, Alphabet, said in a memo to employees last week that "we need to be more entrepreneurial, more urgent, more focused and more reckless than we were in the good times." He said the company will slow down its frantic hiring and that new hires will be focused on engineering and other technical positions. "Making the company more efficient relies on all of us," he said.