Who killed Google Search?

This is the story of how Google Search died. Through real email exchanges, it talks about the changes in product concepts and management methods, revealing that technology products can only create real value when they serve users.

The story begins at Google in 2019, when a peaceful afternoon was broken by an urgent email.

The email came from Jerry Dischler, VP of the advertising department, who and Shiv Venkataraman, VP of engineering, announced a "code yellow" because search revenue growth had shown "steady to soft."

This alert means that the company needs to take immediate action, as the decline in revenue could have a significant impact on quarterly financial reports.

Dischler listed several contributing factors — search query growth “significantly behind forecasts,” the “timing” of the revenue rollout significantly behind schedule, and vague concerns about “several advertiser-specific and industry weaknesses in search.”

Ben Gomes, head of Google Search, is feeling the pressure as never before.

He recalled his journey since joining the company in 1999, before Google dominated the market.

He has watched Google Search grow from a simple idea to a service that billions of people around the world rely on.

Gomes firmly believes that the success of search comes from its consistent adherence to the user-centric principle.

1. Conflict of Search Concepts

With the launch of "code yellow", Gomes and his team began intense discussions.

They realized that the ads team's pursuit of growth might sacrifice the quality of search.

A few days earlier, on Feb. 1, 2019, Kristen Gil, then Google’s vice president of business finance, had sent an email to Gomes and Shashi Thakur, then Google’s vice president of engineering for search and discovery, saying the ads team had been considering issuing a “code yellow” to “close the gap we were seeing in search,” meaning that the search team was unable to operate with the growth fidelity that the ads division demanded.

On February 2, 2019, Thakur and Gomes shared their anxieties with Nick Fox, VP of Search and Google Assistant, in which Thakur listed multiple disconnects between the advertising and search teams and discussed how the search team could fine-tune 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 quest for efficient search.”

On February 6, 2019, Gomes responded to Gil’s email, saying that he believed search was “too close to money” and ended his email by saying that he was “concerned that growth is the only thing Google is thinking about,” expressing his insistence on search quality.

He stressed that search and advertising should maintain a certain degree of independence to avoid commercial interests affecting the fairness of search.

However, his advice seemed to be ignored, with company executives more focused on short-term financial performance.

In the days that followed, Gomes and his team were forced into a debate about how to increase search “engagement.”

They were asked to adopt tactics that could mislead users, such as turning off spell check or reducing ranking improvements, in order to increase the time users spend on search results pages.

On March 22, 2019, Darshan Kantak, Vice President of Product Management at Google, announced the end of "code yellow".

However, the end of the 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 had intended to send to Raghavan, now the head of Google Search.

He began by saying he was "annoyed both personally and on behalf of the search team."

Regarding increasing search "engagement," in a lengthy email, he stressed that strategies that mislead users would not last long, and that "there may be trade-offs between different types of negative user impacts caused by engagement hacking," and that he was "deeply troubled" by the matter.

He also added that this is why he doesn’t think query is a good metric for search, and that the best defense for query weakness is to create “an engaging user experience that keeps users coming back.”

2. The cost of change

In May 2019, Google redesigned the way it displays ads on the Google mobile search platform, replacing the bright green "ad" label and URL color on ads with a small bold black note "ad", making the link look the same as a normal search link.

Article address: https://searchengineland.com/search-ad-labeling-history-google-bing-254332?ref=wheresyoured.at

In January 2020, Google brought this change to the desktop, which The Verge's Jon Porterb said made "Google's ads look like search results."

Article URL: https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2020/1/23/21078343/google-ad-desktop-design-change-favicon-icon-ftc-guidelines?ref=wheresyoured.at

Five months later, and more than a year after the "code yellow" fiasco, Google named Prabhakar Raghavan the 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 is 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 transition from technology-driven to management-driven.

For Gomes, it could mean the end of the idea of ​​search that he holds dear.

Under Raghavan's leadership, Google Search began rolling out a series of updates designed to increase ad visibility and click-through rates, but at the same time the quality of search results was called into question. The proliferation of ads and SEO content made it increasingly difficult for users to find truly valuable information.

P.S. SEO 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).

Meanwhile, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin left the company in 2019, leaving behind a Google dominated by professional managers.

These managers seem to care more about digital growth than the long-term value of their products.

Since Prabhakar took power in 2020, Google Search has seen a sharp decline in the market, with numerous "core" search updates purportedly intended to improve the quality of results having an adverse effect, increasing the popularity of spammy and SEO content.

The original author said that this is the result of taking technology away from its true creators and handing it over to managers, especially in an era when "management" is synonymous with "staying as far away from actual work as possible."

When you are the one who does nothing but make as much profit as possible, you only care about growth. You are not a user, but a businessman who is extracting value from the technology industry.

3. Behind the rise and fall of Google search

Every detail of this story is based on real events and public email exchanges, and 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 by profit alone, but should return to its essence - serving users and creating real value.

As users and beneficiaries of technology, we have the 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/