The Man Who Killed Google Search

“The story begins on February 5th 2019, when Ben Gomes, Google’s head of search, had a problem. Jerry Dischler, then the VP and General Manager of Ads at Google, and Shiv Venkataraman, then the VP of Engineering, Search and Ads on Google properties, had called a ‘code yellow’ for search revenue due to, and I quote, ‘steady weakness in the daily numbers’ and a likeliness that it would end the quarter significantly behind”

“In emails released as part of the Department of Justice’s antitrust case against Google, Dischler laid out several contributing factors—search query growth was ‘significantly behind forecast,’ the ‘timing’ of revenue launches was significantly behind, and a vague worry that “several advertiser-specific and sector weaknesses” existed in search”

“there was a good reason that Google’s founders separated search from ads”

“Thakur listed the multiple points of disconnection between the ads and search teams, discussing how the search team wasn’t able to finely optimize engagement on Google without ‘hacking engagement,’ a term that means effectively tricking users into spending more time on a site, and that doing so would lead them to ‘abandon work on efficient journeys.’ In one email, Fox adds that there was a ‘pretty big disconnect between what finance and ads want’ and what search was doing”

“On February 6th 2019, Gomes said that he believed that search was ‘getting too close to the money,’ and ended his email by saying that he was ‘concerned that growth is all that Google was thinking about’”

Gomes “he explained how one might increase engagement with Google Search, but specifically added that they could ‘increase queries quite easily in the short term in user negative ways,’ like turning off spell correction, turning off ranking improvements, or placing refinements—effectively labels—all over the page, adding that it was ‘possible that there are trade offs here between different kinds of user negativity caused by engagement hacking,’ and that he was ‘deeply deeply uncomfortable with this’”

“the timing of the March 2019 core update, along with the traffic increases to previously-suppressed sites, heavily suggests that Google’s response to the Code Yellow was to roll back changes that were made to maintain the quality of search results”

“Five months later, a little over a year after the Code Yellow debacle, Google would make Prabhakar Raghavan the head of Google Search, with Jerry Dischler taking his place as head of ads. After nearly 20 years of building Google Search, Gomes would be relegated to SVP of Education at Google. Gomes, who was a critical part of the original team that made Google Search work, who has been credited with establishing the culture of the world’s largest and most important search engine, was chased out by a growth-hungry managerial types led by Prabhakar Raghavan, a management consultant wearing an engineer costume”

“Sundar Pichai, who previously worked at McKinsey—arguably the most morally abhorrent company that has ever existed”

“These emails—which I encourage you to look up—tell a dramatic story about how Google’s finance and advertising teams, led by Raghavan with the blessing of CEO Sundar Pichai, actively worked to make Google worse to make the company more money”

“This is what I mean when I talk about the Rot Economy — the illogical, product-destroying mindset that turns the products you love into torturous, frustrating quasi-tools that require you to fight the company’s intentions to get the service you want”

“Every single article I’ve read about Gomes’ tenure at Google spoke of a man deeply ingrained in the foundation of one of the most important technologies ever made, who had dedicated decades to maintaining a product with a—to quote Gomes himself—‘guiding light of serving the user and using technology to do that’”

“Do you want to know what Prabhakar Raghavan’s old job was? What Prabhakar Raghavan, the new head of Google Search, the guy that has run Google Search into the ground, the guy who is currently destroying search, did before his job at Google? He was the head of search for Yahoo from 2005 through 2012”

“The man who deposed Ben Gomes—someone who worked on Google Search from the very beginning—was so shit at his job that in 2009 Yahoo effectively threw in the towel on its own search technology, instead choosing to license Bing’s engine in a ten-year deal”

“Since Prabhakar took the reins in 2020, Google Search has dramatically declined, with the numerous “core” search updates allegedly made to improve the quality of results having an adverse effect, increasing the prevalence of spammy, search engine optimized content”

“Raghavan is a hall-of-fame rot economist, and one of the many managerial types that have caused immeasurable damage to the Internet in the name of growth and ‘shareholder value.’ And I believe these uber-managers—these ultra-pencil-pushers and growth-hounds—are the forces destroying tech’s ability to innovate”