This is the story of how Google Search died, and the people responsible for killing it.
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
It’s a narrative whose connection with reality is hard to discern. One could instead say enshittification is an emergent and often unstoppable force, carried out by whoever happens to be in place at the time. The Zitron piece is more like the “great man theory” in reverse. It evokes a shining counterfactual picture where without the evil villain Raghavan messing things up, Google Search would be wonderful (let’s ignore Google’s perennial other failures, privacy invasions, etc). If only that one specific electron had gone through the other slit, everything would be different! Reality is rarely like that. All roads tend to lead to the same place.
am I missing something or are we talking about the specific policy decision to make the site suck more for clicks? I’m sympathetic to the argument that there are lots of other contributing reasons for google getting worse and that they aren’t really addressed in the article, but the causal link between this one guy and engagement hacking couldn’t be more clear.
I’m also sympathetic to the argument that the real issue is systemic (we all live in capitalism), but again, the topic is the specific policy decision to make the site suck more for clicks. sighing about inevitability in response to a very informative article about that decision isn’t a method of critique, it’s a method of dismissal, and it comes across as rather lazy thinking
It’s a narrative whose connection with reality is hard to discern
If only there were email communications that all but prove the allegations.
One could instead say enshittification is an emergent and often unstoppable force, carried out by whoever happens to be in place at the time.
Yeah sure, and you can keep pissing into the ocean while you’re at it while real people try to fix the problems they perceive.
All roads tend to lead to the same place.
Hopefully that’s a place where no one has to read bizarrely dismissive drive-by comments made by people who have No Fucking Clue about what they’re talking about and lack any kind of intellectual spine.
If only there were email communications that all but prove the allegations.
The allegations are presumably true but that is almost irrelevant. The question is what the world would be like in the opposite situation. The lessons of history suggest it would be pretty much the same world as the one that we got. A big enough pile of money in one place will never be left standing. For the article’s narrative to mean anything, it has to argue otherwise, and it makes no attempt at that.
I know what you mean. Naming names is good imo but I was rather irked by the way the piece seemingly allows for a good, virtuous google under the leadership of benevolent engineers. It’s not how capitalism works, it’s certainly not how public companies work.
What particularly confused me is I don’t recall google search being good in the years leading up to 2019? I assume it was somewhat better probably, but it was well on its way to utter shite.
I like to think that there exists a small god whose portfolio consists of punishing people who use the word “narrative” as a bludgeon. He strongly resembles late 2000’s-era Terry Pratchett and is a dab hand with the classic hand-tossed lighting bolt.
where without the evil villain Raghavan messing things up,
ah yes, a detailed reading of the post does indeed reveal a narrative element best described as being on par with a story one would tell a child! certainly it has no bearing on the commonly-observed issue seen in many industries of late. oh no, massive rent extraction and industry-wide innovationless gatekeeping is merely an emergent property and is not driven by the choices of any particular individuals, no sir-ee!
in vacuum, you could say that if not him, there would be some other manager doing the same, pushed to the top by the same forces. but in this case, we have a dude who destroyed yahoo search for “growth”/short term profit, then when that company basically fell apart in large part due to his motherfuckery, he jumped ship, moved to google, failed up however many times he had to, and did exactly the same thing. you would know that if you read the article
If only there were specific people making those executive decisions that enshittify everything, we could all try to hold them at least a little bit accountable for it. We could call them “executives” or something.
Alas, corporate growth-at-all-cost policies are merely an emergent property with no one particularly responsible for them at all. It’s not like there’s something as damning as, say, an email thread outlining exactly who made all those shitty decisions.
if only it was about anything of any importance in the world
It’s a narrative whose connection with reality is hard to discern. One could instead say enshittification is an emergent and often unstoppable force, carried out by whoever happens to be in place at the time. The Zitron piece is more like the “great man theory” in reverse. It evokes a shining counterfactual picture where without the evil villain Raghavan messing things up, Google Search would be wonderful (let’s ignore Google’s perennial other failures, privacy invasions, etc). If only that one specific electron had gone through the other slit, everything would be different! Reality is rarely like that. All roads tend to lead to the same place.
am I missing something or are we talking about the specific policy decision to make the site suck more for clicks? I’m sympathetic to the argument that there are lots of other contributing reasons for google getting worse and that they aren’t really addressed in the article, but the causal link between this one guy and engagement hacking couldn’t be more clear.
I’m also sympathetic to the argument that the real issue is systemic (we all live in capitalism), but again, the topic is the specific policy decision to make the site suck more for clicks. sighing about inevitability in response to a very informative article about that decision isn’t a method of critique, it’s a method of dismissal, and it comes across as rather lazy thinking
If only there were email communications that all but prove the allegations.
Yeah sure, and you can keep pissing into the ocean while you’re at it while real people try to fix the problems they perceive.
Hopefully that’s a place where no one has to read bizarrely dismissive drive-by comments made by people who have No Fucking Clue about what they’re talking about and lack any kind of intellectual spine.
The allegations are presumably true but that is almost irrelevant. The question is what the world would be like in the opposite situation. The lessons of history suggest it would be pretty much the same world as the one that we got. A big enough pile of money in one place will never be left standing. For the article’s narrative to mean anything, it has to argue otherwise, and it makes no attempt at that.
Ben Gomes is the counterfactual. I get the feeling you didn’t actually read anything.
You have a lot of growing up to do.
I know what you mean. Naming names is good imo but I was rather irked by the way the piece seemingly allows for a good, virtuous google under the leadership of benevolent engineers. It’s not how capitalism works, it’s certainly not how public companies work.
What particularly confused me is I don’t recall google search being good in the years leading up to 2019? I assume it was somewhat better probably, but it was well on its way to utter shite.
It was certainly better, maybe even functional. It has been getting progressively worse up to where we are now. LLM blogspam has made it useless.
imagine if your posts here meant anything
you might be a fucking idiot
I like to think that there exists a small god whose portfolio consists of punishing people who use the word “narrative” as a bludgeon. He strongly resembles late 2000’s-era Terry Pratchett and is a dab hand with the classic hand-tossed lighting bolt.
ah yes, a detailed reading of the post does indeed reveal a narrative element best described as being on par with a story one would tell a child! certainly it has no bearing on the commonly-observed issue seen in many industries of late. oh no, massive rent extraction and industry-wide innovationless gatekeeping is merely an emergent property and is not driven by the choices of any particular individuals, no sir-ee!
I swear, some people will fucking break their backs to lick the boot
in vacuum, you could say that if not him, there would be some other manager doing the same, pushed to the top by the same forces. but in this case, we have a dude who destroyed yahoo search for “growth”/short term profit, then when that company basically fell apart in large part due to his motherfuckery, he jumped ship, moved to google, failed up however many times he had to, and did exactly the same thing. you would know that if you read the article
somehow it didn’t happen before him. why so? it’s a mystery that will keep me up for weeks, maybe decades
If only there were specific people making those executive decisions that enshittify everything, we could all try to hold them at least a little bit accountable for it. We could call them “executives” or something.
Alas, corporate growth-at-all-cost policies are merely an emergent property with no one particularly responsible for them at all. It’s not like there’s something as damning as, say, an email thread outlining exactly who made all those shitty decisions.
@solrize @dgerard did Raghavan write this?
he growth hacked it