This is the story of how Google search died. Through real email exchanges, from changes in product concepts to changes in management methods, it reveals that technology products can only create real value by serving users.
The story begins at Google in 2019, when a peaceful afternoon was broken by an urgent email.
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The email comes from Jerry Dischler, VP of advertising, who and VP of engineering Shiv Venkataraman announced a “code yellow” because search revenue growth has “stable to soft.”
This alert means companies need to take immediate action, as a drop in revenue could significantly impact quarterly results.
Dischler listed several contributing factors — search query growth “significantly lagging forecasts,” the “timing” of the revenue rollout being significantly behind, and vague concerns about “several advertiser-specific and industry weaknesses in search.”
Ben Gomes, the head of Google search, is feeling more pressure than ever.
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He recalled his journey since joining the company in 1999, before Google dominated the market.
He's seen Google Search grow from a simple idea to a service relied on by billions of people around the world.
Gomes firmly believes that search's success stems from its continued user-centricity.
Clash of Search Philosophies
With the launch of “code yellow”, Gomes began intense discussions with his team.
They realized that the ad team's pursuit of growth might come at the expense of search quality.
Days before on February 1, 2019, Kristen Gil, then Google's VP of commercial finance, sent an email to Gomes and Shashi Thakur, then Google's VP of engineering for search and discovery, saying that the advertising team had been considering A “code yellow” was issued to “eliminate the search gap we were seeing” where the search team was unable to operate with the growth fidelity required by the ad department.
On February 2, 2019, Thakur and Gomes shared their anxieties with Nick Fox, vice president of search and Google Assistant.
In it, Thakur listed multiple points of disconnect between advertising and search teams and discussed how search teams can finely optimize engagement on Google without “manipulating engagement.”
The term means effectively tricking users into spending more time on a site, and in doing so causing them to “abandon the pursuit of efficient search.”
On February 6, 2019, Gomes responded to Gil's email, stating that he believed search was “too close to the money,” and ended his email expressing his concerns about search by saying that he was “worried that growth is the only thing on Google's mind.” Quality insistence.
He emphasized that search and advertising should maintain a certain degree of independence to prevent commercial interests from affecting the impartiality of search. However, his opinions appear to have been ignored, with company executives more focused on short-term financial performance.
In the days that followed, Gomes and his team were forced to engage in a debate about how to increase search “engagement.”
They are asked to adopt tactics that may mislead users, such as turning off spell check or lowering ranking improvements to increase the time users spend on the search results page.
On March 22, 2019, Google Vice President of Product Management Darshan Kantak announced the end of “code yellow”.
However, the end of this crisis did not bring much joy, but instead exposed Google's internal anxiety about growth.
A day later, Gomes sent Fox and Thakur the email he intended to send to Raghavan, now the head of Google search.
He began by saying he was “irritated personally and on behalf of the search team.”
Regarding improving “engagement” in search, in a long email, he emphasized that the strategy of misleading users will not last long, and that “there may be trade-offs between different types of negative user effects caused by engagement hacks.” He was “deeply disturbed” by the incident.
He also added that this is why he doesn't think queries are a good metric for measuring search, and that the best defense for query weaknesses is to create “an engaging user experience that keeps users coming back.”
cost of change
In May 2019, Google will redesign the way ads are displayed on the Google mobile search platform, replacing the bright green “ad” label and URL color on the ads with a small bold black annotation “ad”, see the link It looks the same as a normal search link.
In January 2020, Google brought this change to the desktop, which Jon Porterb of The Verge said made “Google ads look just like search results.”
Five months later, more than a year after the “code yellow” fiasco, Google appointed Prabhakar Raghavan as head of Google search.
After nearly 20 years building Google Search, Gomes will be demoted to senior vice president of Google Education.
Gomes was a key part of the core team that made Google search work, and he was credited with building the culture of the world's largest and most important search engine, only to be pushed out by growth-hungry management types led by Prabhakar Raghavan.
This change symbolizes the beginning of Google search's shift from technology-driven to management-driven. For Gomes, this could mean the end of the search philosophy he holds dear.
Under Raghavan's leadership, Google Search began rolling out a series of updates that were designed to improve ad visibility and click-through rates, but also called into question the quality of search results, flooding users with ads and SEO content. It’s getting harder and harder to find truly valuable information.
Attachment: Search engine optimization content refers to the practice of adjusting web page content, structure, and other factors to improve a website's ranking and visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs).
At the same time, Google's co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin left the company in 2019, leaving a Google dominated by professional managers. These managers seem more concerned about numerical growth than the long-term value of their products.
Since Prabhakar took power in 2020, Google search has seen a steep decline in the market, with numerous “core” search updates allegedly made to improve the quality of results having the detrimental effect of increasing the prevalence of spam and SEO content.
The author of the original article said that this is the result of taking technology away from the real creators and handing it to managers, especially in this era where “management” is synonymous with “being as far away from actual work as possible.”
When you're someone who does nothing and wants to make as much profit as possible, all you care about is growth.
You are not a user, you are a businessman extracting value from the technology industry.
Behind the rise and fall of Google search
Every detail of this story is based on actual events and publicly available email exchanges.
It reveals how even the world's largest technology companies can fall because of bad decisions.
This is a story about ideals and reality, creation and management.
The rise and fall of Google search reminds us that the development of technology should not be driven solely by profit, but should return to its essence – serving users and creating real value.
As users and beneficiaries of technology, we have a right to know the stories behind them and learn from them. Let us pay attention to the development of technology and protect our common digital world.
References:
https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/