Twitter employees' Google Chat service was disabled without explanation before the new round of layoffs, report says

• The Google Chat service used by Twitter staff was disabled last week, The Verge reported.
• The company's Slack also went down on Wednesday, per previous reports.

Twitter employees found themselves with fewer options to communicate after their Google Chat service was reportedly disabled last week.

The use of the service for work emails was curbed without explanation, according to The Verge.

On Wednesday, the company's Slack was also manually shut down by someone inside Twitter, Platformer reported, citing a person familiar with the situation.

Now some Twitter employees are speculating that the move was intended to limit internal communication during further layoffs that occurred over the weekend, per The Verge. Musk reportedly cut at least 200 Twitter employees including multiple engineers, product team members, and director of product management Esther Crawford.

Platformer's Zoë Schiffer tweeted on Monday that Twitter was bringing its Slack service back but old channels were being archived. During previous layoffs, Twitter workers flooded Slack with farewell messages.

Representatives for Twitter did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment made outside normal working hours.

Musk has been conducting rolling layoffs after acquiring the company for $44 billion in October.

Twitter's total headcount is estimated to be below 2,000, down from 7,500 before Musk took over, The Verge reported citing current and former employees.

Twitter's internal directory has been offline since Musk's takeover making it hard for employees to know the exact extent of the cuts, the report said.