Ed Zitron wrote a piece called The Man Who Killed Google Search. It details how Prabhakar Raghavan, Google’s former head of ads, led a coup so he could run Google Search, and how an email chain in 2019 started a cascade of events that would lead him to put it on the ground said
Everyone in the SEO/SEM space is talking about this article and I went back to SEO on fire. If you haven’t read it yet, you should.
I will include some posts from Ed Zitron:
In February 2019, Google’s ad and finance teams called search a “code yellow,” because revenue was slow and people seriously weren’t asking Google enough questions. Ben Gomes, then head of search, refused to make Google Search worse for profit. pic.twitter.com/KyoaKptQpN
— Ed Zitron (@edzitron) April 23, 2024
Gomes managed to get Google help through code yellow, but Raghavan asked for more, saying Ben hadn’t increased the queries enough. Gomes sent a letter to say he was “deeply, deeply uncomfortable” with the ways Google wanted to grow search. pic.twitter.com/VZbr79yyRx
— Ed Zitron (@edzitron) April 23, 2024
Prabhakar Raghavan may be a computer scientist, but he joined Google in 2012 as a manager, working directly under CEO Sundar Pichai, a former McKinsey man. Raghavan is a class traitor who deliberately ended Ben Gomes, who worked on the research for 19 years. pic.twitter.com/2HAKZbBdOd
— Ed Zitron (@edzitron) April 23, 2024
Prabhakar Raghavan is a professional failure, a man who has fallen into the top job in software, and since becoming head of search in 2020, Google has become an ultra-profitable and increasingly less useful Raghavan is a villain. pic.twitter.com/lGwWApvYhq
— Ed Zitron (@edzitron) April 23, 2024
Anyway, here’s Raghavan from a few hours ago saying that the new operational reality of search is that they’re going to have less time to do stuff! pic.twitter.com/u6PRu2PTv0
— Ed Zitron (@edzitron) April 23, 2024
More context from a former search engineer who shares a little more context about how things got a lot worse for search technologically pic.twitter.com/wknLjTRGik
— Ed Zitron (@edzitron) April 24, 2024
Here are some of our many industry posts on this:
Heroes, villains, code yellows and more -> Emails released as part of US v. Google show how Google’s finance and advertising teams led by Prabhakar Raghavan screwed up search to make more money for the company.
“The Thread is a dark window into the world of growth-focused tech, where Thakur… pic.twitter.com/44q9d5tu7Y
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) April 24, 2024
To be fair, it’s been a long time since I felt like we were in the darkest timeline. pic.twitter.com/3E13xSi6as
— Keith Goode (@keithgoode) April 24, 2024
This article from @edzitron seems to have identified the dynamics behind Google’s quality degradation.
He makes some leaps and assumptions in painting Prabhakar Raghavan as the villain of the story; I think there are likely to be several villains. But, I think you have done the right thing… https://t.co/1ljJ7WDr8u
— Chris Silver Smith (@si1very) April 24, 2024
Extremely biased, but still fascinating. Also the fundamental truth that the founders of Google are trying to isolate organic search within a bubble of false academia is failing. Managers and lawyers, who have all the real power, are much more interested in cash.
— Ammon Johns♞ (@Ammon_Johns) April 24, 2024
SEO – Read this article. It has everything:
• Fantastic narration
• A wild take on a Google villain
• Validation of your wildest SEO conspiracy theories (ads and search quality)
• Believable subtext to an ongoing Google narrative about the death of SEO https://t.co/Y7cUrVtEjX
— Garrett Sussman ☕️🔎 (@garrettsussman) April 24, 2024
And much more, to see this way.
I’m still digging after two days, so I apologize for not digging more…
Discussion in the forum a X.
