WEBVTT - The Man That Destroyed Google Search 0:00:02.440 --> 0:00:07.040 All Zone Media. Hello, and welcome to Better Offline. I'm 0:00:07.080 --> 0:00:20.079 your host ed zig Tron. Well, and in the next 0:00:20.079 --> 0:00:22.759 two episodes, I'm going to tell you the names some 0:00:22.800 --> 0:00:26.320 of the people responsible for destroying the Internet. And I'm 0:00:26.320 --> 0:00:29.920 going to start on February fifth, twenty nineteen, when Ben Gomes, 0:00:30.000 --> 0:00:33.400 Google's former head of Search, well, he had a problem. 0:00:33.640 --> 0:00:36.640 Jerry Dishler, then the VP and GM of Ads at Google, 0:00:36.680 --> 0:00:39.680 and Shiv Van Carterman, then the VP of Engineering Search 0:00:39.720 --> 0:00:42.640 and Ads on Google Properties, had called something called a 0:00:42.720 --> 0:00:45.480 code yellow for search revenue due to and I quote 0:00:45.479 --> 0:00:47.840 emails that came out as part of Google's anti trust 0:00:47.840 --> 0:00:51.920 hearing steady weakness in the daily numbers and a likeliness 0:00:52.240 --> 0:00:55.200 that it would end the quarter significantly behind in metrics 0:00:55.240 --> 0:00:59.920 that kind of unclear for those unfamiliar with Google's, in turn, 0:01:00.040 --> 0:01:03.320 a kind of scientology esque jargon which means most people, 0:01:03.800 --> 0:01:07.000 let me explain, a code yellow isn't a terrible need 0:01:07.040 --> 0:01:10.360 to piss or some sort of crisis of moderate severity. 0:01:10.760 --> 0:01:14.200 The yellow, according to Stephen Levy's Tell All book about Google, 0:01:14.520 --> 0:01:16.640 refers to and I promise this is not a joke, 0:01:16.840 --> 0:01:19.199 the color of a tank top that a former VP 0:01:19.280 --> 0:01:21.640 of Engineering called Wayne Rosling used to wear during his 0:01:21.720 --> 0:01:25.400 time at the company. It's essentially the equivalent of deafcom 0:01:25.480 --> 0:01:28.440 one and activates, as Levy explained, a war room like 0:01:28.520 --> 0:01:31.560 situation where workers are pulled from their desks and into 0:01:31.560 --> 0:01:33.560 a conference room where they tackle the problem as a 0:01:33.600 --> 0:01:39.160 top priority. Any other projects or concerns are sidelined and independently. 0:01:39.440 --> 0:01:42.240 I've heard there are other colors like purple. I'm not 0:01:42.280 --> 0:01:44.160 going to get into that, though, it's quite boring and 0:01:44.240 --> 0:01:48.000 irrelevant to this situation. In emails released as part of 0:01:48.000 --> 0:01:51.080 the Department of Justices antitrust case against Google, as a 0:01:51.120 --> 0:01:55.600 previously mentioned Dishler laid out several contributing factors. Search query 0:01:55.640 --> 0:01:59.320 growth was significantly behind forecast, the timing of revenue launches 0:01:59.400 --> 0:02:02.360 was significantly behind, and he had this vague worry that 0:02:02.440 --> 0:02:07.080 several advertiser specific in sector weaknesses existed in search. Now 0:02:07.080 --> 0:02:09.520 I want to cover something because I've messed up, and 0:02:09.560 --> 0:02:12.160 I really want to be clear about this. I've previously 0:02:12.280 --> 0:02:15.200 and erroneously referred to the code yellow as something that 0:02:15.240 --> 0:02:17.760 Gomes raised as a means of calling attention to the 0:02:17.760 --> 0:02:20.400 proximity of Google's ad side getting a little too close 0:02:20.440 --> 0:02:24.600 to search. I'm afraid the truth is extremely depressing and 0:02:24.680 --> 0:02:28.079 so much grimmar. The code yellow was actually the rumble 0:02:28.120 --> 0:02:31.359 of the goddamn rot economy, with Google's revenue arms sounding 0:02:31.360 --> 0:02:35.520 the alarm that its golden goose wasn't laying enough eggs. Gomes, 0:02:35.600 --> 0:02:38.880 a Googler of nineteen years that basically built the foundation 0:02:39.200 --> 0:02:41.800 of modern search engines, should go down as one of 0:02:41.840 --> 0:02:44.400 the few people in tech that actually fought for an 0:02:44.440 --> 0:02:47.679 actual principle, and he was destroyed by a guy called 0:02:47.720 --> 0:02:51.840 Prabaka Ragavan, a computer scientist class traitor that sided with 0:02:51.880 --> 0:02:56.239 the management consultancy sect. More confusingly, one of their problems 0:02:56.360 --> 0:02:59.760 was that there was insufficient growth in queries, as in 0:03:00.200 --> 0:03:03.919 the amount of things that people were asking Google. It's 0:03:03.960 --> 0:03:06.520 a bit like if Ford decided that things were going 0:03:06.600 --> 0:03:09.280 poorly because their drivers weren't putting enough goddamn miles on 0:03:09.320 --> 0:03:13.560 their trucks. This whole story has personally upset me, and 0:03:13.600 --> 0:03:15.360 I think you're going to hear that in this but 0:03:15.480 --> 0:03:18.680 going through these emails is just very depressing. 0:03:20.080 --> 0:03:20.480 Anyway. 0:03:20.960 --> 0:03:24.800 A few days beforehand, on February first, twenty nineteen, Kristen Gill, 0:03:24.919 --> 0:03:29.120 then Google's VP business finance officer had emailed Shashi Thakker, 0:03:29.600 --> 0:03:32.680 then Google's VP of Engineering, Search and Discover, saying that 0:03:32.720 --> 0:03:35.280 the ADS team had been considering a code yellow to 0:03:35.400 --> 0:03:40.400 close the search gap it was seeing, vaguely referring to 0:03:40.440 --> 0:03:43.960 how critical that growth was to an unnamed company plan. 0:03:44.600 --> 0:03:47.400 To be clear, this email was in response to Thaker 0:03:47.600 --> 0:03:50.040 stating that there is nothing that the search team could 0:03:50.080 --> 0:03:52.440 do to operate at the fidelity of growth that the 0:03:52.480 --> 0:03:56.040 ADS department had demanded. Shashy Forward did the email to 0:03:56.080 --> 0:03:58.800 Gomes asking if there's any way to discuss this with 0:03:58.880 --> 0:04:02.560 Sandar Pashai, Google CEO, and declared that there was no 0:04:02.680 --> 0:04:05.160 way he would sign up for a high fidelity business 0:04:05.200 --> 0:04:09.160 metric for daily active users on search. Saker also said 0:04:09.200 --> 0:04:12.200 something that I've been thinking about constantly since I read 0:04:12.200 --> 0:04:15.960 these emails, that there was a good reason that Google's 0:04:15.960 --> 0:04:20.240 founders separated search from ads. I want you to remember 0:04:20.279 --> 0:04:24.240 that line for later. A day later, on February second, 0:04:24.279 --> 0:04:28.119 twenty nineteen, Thacker and Gomes shared their anxieties with Nick Fox, 0:04:28.320 --> 0:04:31.159 a vice president of Search and Google assistant, entering a 0:04:31.200 --> 0:04:34.320 multiple day long debate about Google's sun lust for growth. 0:04:35.279 --> 0:04:38.000 This thread is a dark window into the world of 0:04:38.040 --> 0:04:41.159 growth focus Tech, where the Kherr listed the multiple points 0:04:41.200 --> 0:04:44.359 of disconnection between ads and Search, discussing how the search 0:04:44.400 --> 0:04:48.840 team wasn't able to finally optimize engagement on Google without 0:04:48.839 --> 0:04:52.400 hacking it, a term that means effectively tricking users into 0:04:52.400 --> 0:04:54.800 spending more time on a site, and that doing so 0:04:54.920 --> 0:04:57.800 would lead them to and I quote, abandoned work on 0:04:57.839 --> 0:05:01.920 efficient journeys. In one email, Fox adds that there was 0:05:01.960 --> 0:05:04.799 a pretty big disconnect between what finance and ads wants 0:05:04.960 --> 0:05:09.440 and what Search was doing. Every part of this story 0:05:09.960 --> 0:05:13.719 pisses me off so much. When Gomes pushed back on 0:05:13.760 --> 0:05:16.560 the multiple requests for growth, Fox added that all three 0:05:16.600 --> 0:05:18.880 of them were responsible for Search and that Search was 0:05:19.160 --> 0:05:21.880 and again I quote, the revenue engine of the company, 0:05:22.200 --> 0:05:24.760 and that bartering with the ads and finance teams was 0:05:24.800 --> 0:05:28.680 now potentially the new reality of their jobs. On February sixth, 0:05:28.760 --> 0:05:31.800 twenty nineteen, Gomes said that he believed that Search was 0:05:31.880 --> 0:05:34.760 getting too close to the money and ended his email 0:05:34.920 --> 0:05:37.320 by saying that he was concerned that growth is all 0:05:37.320 --> 0:05:41.920 that Google was thinking about. On March twenty second, twenty nineteen, 0:05:42.000 --> 0:05:45.800 Google VP of Product Management Darshan Cantac would declare the 0:05:45.960 --> 0:05:49.359 end of the Code Yellow. The thread mostly consisted of 0:05:49.400 --> 0:05:53.920 congratulatory emails until Gomes made the mistake of responding congratulating everyone, 0:05:54.120 --> 0:05:56.240 saying that the plans architected as part of the Code 0:05:56.279 --> 0:06:01.640 Yellow would do well throughout the year. Enter Probarka Ragavan, 0:06:02.160 --> 0:06:05.080 then Google's head of Ads and the true mastermind behind 0:06:05.080 --> 0:06:07.960 the Code Yellow, who would respond curtly saying that the 0:06:08.000 --> 0:06:12.039 current revenue targets were addressed by heroic RPM engineering and 0:06:12.080 --> 0:06:16.479 that the core query softness continued without mitigation, a very 0:06:16.480 --> 0:06:19.640 clunky way of saying that despite these changes, query growth 0:06:19.880 --> 0:06:21.839 was not happening at the rate he needed it to. 0:06:22.880 --> 0:06:26.039 A day later, Gomes emailed Fox Andhaker an email he 0:06:26.080 --> 0:06:29.200 intended to center Ragavan. He led by saying that he 0:06:29.240 --> 0:06:32.760 was annoyed both personally and on behalf of the search team. 0:06:33.040 --> 0:06:37.000 In this very long email, he explained in arduous detail 0:06:37.240 --> 0:06:40.640 how one might increase engagement with Google Search, but specifically 0:06:40.720 --> 0:06:44.320 added that they could increase queries quite easily in the 0:06:44.320 --> 0:06:47.960 short term, but only in user negative ways, like turning 0:06:47.960 --> 0:06:52.200 off spell correction or ranking improvements, or placing refinements effectively 0:06:52.279 --> 0:06:55.120 labels all over the page, adding that it was possible 0:06:55.160 --> 0:06:57.320 that there are trade offs here between the different kinds 0:06:57.320 --> 0:07:01.080 of user negativity caused by engagement hacking, that he was deeply, 0:07:01.400 --> 0:07:05.080 deeply uncomfortable with this. He also added that this was 0:07:05.120 --> 0:07:08.200 the reason he didn't believe that queries, as in the 0:07:08.240 --> 0:07:11.720 amount of the things with people searching on Google, were 0:07:11.760 --> 0:07:14.320 a good metric to measure search, and that the best 0:07:14.320 --> 0:07:18.040 defense against the weaknesses of queries was to create compelling 0:07:18.120 --> 0:07:20.560 user experiences that make users want to come back. 0:07:21.040 --> 0:07:24.160 Crazy idea there, what if the product was good not 0:07:24.640 --> 0:07:25.080 good enough? 0:07:25.120 --> 0:07:29.760 Of prabaka, so little bit of history about Google here. 0:07:29.880 --> 0:07:32.720 They regularly throughout the year do core updates to search. 0:07:32.800 --> 0:07:35.880 These are updates that change the algorithm. Let's say, okay, 0:07:35.880 --> 0:07:37.520 we're going to suppress this kind of thing. We can 0:07:37.560 --> 0:07:40.880 elevate this kind of thing. And they are actually the 0:07:40.920 --> 0:07:45.840 reason that search changes. It's why certain sites suddenly disappear 0:07:45.960 --> 0:07:48.320 or reappear. It's why sites get a ton of traffic, 0:07:48.360 --> 0:07:50.520 some don't get any, and so on and so forth. 0:07:50.560 --> 0:07:53.640 But they do a lot of them. The one that's really. 0:07:53.440 --> 0:07:55.560 Interesting and a little bastard and I went and looked 0:07:55.560 --> 0:07:59.120 through pretty much the last decade of these, the one 0:07:59.120 --> 0:08:00.800 that stood out to me it was the March twenty 0:08:00.920 --> 0:08:03.680 nineteen core update to Search, which happened about a week 0:08:03.760 --> 0:08:06.560 before the end of the code yellow, meaning that it's 0:08:06.720 --> 0:08:10.040 very likely that this was a result of Prabaka's bullshit. 0:08:11.040 --> 0:08:13.320 So this was expected to be one of the largest 0:08:13.400 --> 0:08:15.440 updates to Search in a very long time, and I'm 0:08:15.520 --> 0:08:19.360 quoting Search Engine Journal there. Yet when it launched, many 0:08:19.400 --> 0:08:22.960 found that the update mostly rolled back changes and traffic 0:08:23.000 --> 0:08:26.360 was increasing to sites that had been suppressed by previous updates, 0:08:26.360 --> 0:08:30.160 like Google Search's Penguin update from twenty twelve that specifically 0:08:30.200 --> 0:08:32.040 targeted spami search results. 0:08:33.320 --> 0:08:34.240 There were others that were. 0:08:34.120 --> 0:08:36.600 Seeing traffic as well from an update that happened on 0:08:36.640 --> 0:08:39.120 the first of August twenty eighteen that was a few 0:08:39.160 --> 0:08:41.280 months after Gomes became head of Search. 0:08:42.480 --> 0:08:45.080 While I'm guessing here, I really don't know. I do 0:08:45.160 --> 0:08:45.880 not work for Google. 0:08:45.920 --> 0:08:48.720 I do not have friends there. I think the timing 0:08:48.760 --> 0:08:51.480 of the March twenty nineteen core update, along with the 0:08:51.520 --> 0:08:55.400 traffic increases the previously suppressed sites that one hundred percent 0:08:55.400 --> 0:08:59.319 were spamy seo nonsense. I think these suggest that Google's 0:08:59.320 --> 0:09:01.600 response to the co jello was to roll back changes 0:09:01.600 --> 0:09:05.560 that were made to maintain the quality of search. A 0:09:05.600 --> 0:09:08.280 few months later, in May twenty nineteen, Google would roll 0:09:08.280 --> 0:09:11.320 out a redesign of how ads were shown on Google Search, 0:09:12.160 --> 0:09:15.679 specifically on mobile, replacing the bright green AD label and 0:09:16.040 --> 0:09:18.520 URL color on ads with a tiny, little, bolded black 0:09:18.559 --> 0:09:21.160 note that said ad in the smallest font you could 0:09:21.200 --> 0:09:24.599 possibly put there, with the link looking otherwise identical to 0:09:24.640 --> 0:09:28.320 a regular search link. I guess that's how they managed 0:09:28.360 --> 0:09:31.320 to start hitting their numbers, hah. And then in January 0:09:31.360 --> 0:09:34.240 twenty twenty, Google would bring this change to desktop, and 0:09:34.280 --> 0:09:37.200 the vergins John Porter would suggest that it made Google's 0:09:37.200 --> 0:09:43.839 ads look just like search results now awesome. Five months later, 0:09:44.120 --> 0:09:46.960 a little over a year after the code yellow situation, 0:09:47.440 --> 0:09:51.080 Google would make Probakar Ragavan the head of Google Search, 0:09:51.679 --> 0:09:54.520 with Jerry Dishler taking his place as the head of Ads. 0:09:55.880 --> 0:09:59.040 After nearly twenty years of building Google Search, Gomes would 0:09:59.040 --> 0:10:02.440 be relegated to the spe VP of Education at Google. Domes, 0:10:02.559 --> 0:10:05.120 who was a critical part of the original team that 0:10:05.160 --> 0:10:08.679 made Google Search work, who has been credited with establishing 0:10:08.679 --> 0:10:11.760 the culture of the world's largest and most important search engine, 0:10:12.000 --> 0:10:15.760 was chased out by a growth hungry managerial type, several 0:10:15.840 --> 0:10:19.920 of them actually led by Probagar Ragavan, a management consultant 0:10:19.960 --> 0:10:23.680 wearing an engineer costume. As a side note, by the way, 0:10:23.720 --> 0:10:26.600 I use the term management consultant there as a pejorative 0:10:26.960 --> 0:10:30.120 while he exhibits all the same being counting morally young 0:10:30.160 --> 0:10:33.000 guided behaviors of a management consultant. From what I can tell, 0:10:33.120 --> 0:10:35.800 Ragavan has never actually worked in that particular sector of 0:10:35.840 --> 0:10:36.400 the economy. 0:10:36.880 --> 0:10:38.199 But you know who has. 0:10:38.679 --> 0:10:42.240 San Dhar Pishai, the CEO of Google, who previously worked 0:10:42.240 --> 0:10:46.440 at McKinsey, arguably the most morally abhorrent company that's ever existed, 0:10:46.640 --> 0:10:48.559 having played roles both in the two thousand and eight 0:10:48.640 --> 0:10:51.280 financial crisis, where it encouraged banks to load up on 0:10:51.320 --> 0:10:55.120 debt and floored mortgage backed securities, and the ongoing opioord crisis, 0:10:55.160 --> 0:10:57.959 where it effectively advised Perdue Farmer on how to growth 0:10:57.960 --> 0:11:03.240 hack sales of oxy content and extremely addictive painkiller. McKinsey 0:11:03.280 --> 0:11:06.160 has paid nearly one billion dollars over several settlements due 0:11:06.160 --> 0:11:09.720 to its work with Perdue. But I'm getting sidetracked, but 0:11:09.800 --> 0:11:13.319 one last point. McKinsey is actively anti labor. When a 0:11:13.360 --> 0:11:17.080 company brings in a McKinsey consultant, they're often there to 0:11:17.200 --> 0:11:20.480 advise on how to cut costs, which inevitably means layoffs 0:11:20.480 --> 0:11:24.040 and outsourcing. McKinsey is to the middle class. What fleshy 0:11:24.080 --> 0:11:37.319 in bacteria is the skin. But back to the emails, 0:11:37.720 --> 0:11:42.280 which are a stark example of the monstrous, disgusting rot economy, 0:11:42.480 --> 0:11:46.280 the growth that all costs mindset that's dominating the tech ecosystem. 0:11:46.400 --> 0:11:49.000 And if you take one thing away from this episode, 0:11:49.120 --> 0:11:51.959 I want it to be the name Prabakar Ragavan and 0:11:52.120 --> 0:11:55.360 an understanding that there are people responsible for the current 0:11:55.480 --> 0:11:59.640 state of the Internet. These emails, which I really encourage 0:11:59.679 --> 0:12:01.440 you to look, and if you go to where's youreed 0:12:01.480 --> 0:12:03.440 dot at, you'll be able to see a newsletter that 0:12:03.520 --> 0:12:07.040 has links to them. Well, these emails tell a dramatic 0:12:07.160 --> 0:12:11.320 story about how Google's finance and advertising teams, led by Ragavan, 0:12:11.400 --> 0:12:14.960 with the blessing of CEO Sandhar Pashai, the McKinsey guy, 0:12:15.400 --> 0:12:18.560 actively worked to make Google worse to make the company 0:12:18.559 --> 0:12:21.600 more money. This is exactly what I mean when I 0:12:21.640 --> 0:12:25.520 talk about the economy, an illogical, product destroying mindset that 0:12:25.600 --> 0:12:29.400 turns products you love into torturous frustrating quasi tools that 0:12:29.480 --> 0:12:31.839 require you to fight the company to get the thing 0:12:31.920 --> 0:12:36.240 you want. Ben Gomes was instrumental in making Search work 0:12:36.360 --> 0:12:38.960 both as a product and a business. He joined the 0:12:38.960 --> 0:12:42.079 company in nineteen ninety nine, a time long before Google 0:12:42.200 --> 0:12:44.800 established dominance in the field, and the same year when 0:12:44.880 --> 0:12:47.760 Larry Page and Sergey Britain tried to sell the company 0:12:47.800 --> 0:12:50.920 to Excite for one million dollars, only to walk away 0:12:50.960 --> 0:12:53.920 after Vinnard Coosler and Excite investor and co founder of 0:12:53.960 --> 0:12:57.160 some Microsystems that's now a VC who tried to stop 0:12:57.200 --> 0:12:59.720 people going to a beach in Halfman Bay, Well, he 0:12:59.760 --> 0:13:01.520 tried a low ball and with a seven hundred and 0:13:01.600 --> 0:13:04.880 fifty thousand dollars offer also known as a one hundred 0:13:04.920 --> 0:13:08.640 square foot apartment in San Francisco. In an interview with 0:13:08.679 --> 0:13:12.360 Fast Companies Harry McCracken from twenty eighteen, Gomes freyed Google's 0:13:12.400 --> 0:13:15.640 challenge as taking the page rank algorithm from one machine 0:13:15.800 --> 0:13:18.400 to a whole bunch of machines, and they weren't very 0:13:18.400 --> 0:13:22.319 good machines at the time. Despite his impact and tenure, 0:13:22.600 --> 0:13:24.680 Gomes had only been made head of Search in the 0:13:24.679 --> 0:13:28.559 middle of twenty eighteen after John Gillanderia moved to Apple 0:13:28.640 --> 0:13:32.000 to work on its machine learning and AR strategy. Domes 0:13:32.040 --> 0:13:35.120 had been described as Google's searches are beloved for his 0:13:35.160 --> 0:13:40.679 ability to communicate across Google's many quite decentralized apartments. Every 0:13:40.720 --> 0:13:44.360 single article I've read about Gomes and his tenure at 0:13:44.360 --> 0:13:47.679 Google spoke of a man deeply ingrained in the foundation 0:13:48.000 --> 0:13:50.920 of one of the most important technologies ever made. A 0:13:50.920 --> 0:13:53.599 man who had dedicated decades to maintaining a product with 0:13:53.720 --> 0:13:57.040 a and I quote Gomes here guiding light of serving 0:13:57.320 --> 0:14:00.480 the user and using technology to do that. 0:14:01.240 --> 0:14:03.239 And when finally given the keys. 0:14:03.000 --> 0:14:06.600 To the kingdom the ability to elevate Google Search even further, 0:14:06.840 --> 0:14:09.720 he was rap fucked by a series of rotten careerists 0:14:10.040 --> 0:14:13.800 trying to please Wall Street, led by Provakar Ragavan. Do 0:14:13.840 --> 0:14:16.400 you want to know what Provacar Ragavan's old job was? 0:14:16.520 --> 0:14:19.120 What Probacar Ragavan the new head of Google Search, the 0:14:19.120 --> 0:14:22.080 guy that ran Google Search, that runs Google Search right now, 0:14:22.080 --> 0:14:24.760 that is running Google Search into the goddamn ground. 0:14:24.880 --> 0:14:26.440 Do you want to know what his job was? 0:14:26.600 --> 0:14:29.720 His job before Google, He was the head of search 0:14:29.880 --> 0:14:33.040 for god damn Yahoo from two thousand and five through 0:14:33.120 --> 0:14:36.520 two thy and twelve when he joined the company. When 0:14:36.560 --> 0:14:40.200 Probakar Ragavan took over Yahoo Search, they held a thirty 0:14:40.280 --> 0:14:43.960 point four percent market share, not far from Google's own 0:14:44.080 --> 0:14:47.440 thirty six point nine percent and miles ahead of the 0:14:47.440 --> 0:14:51.600 fifteen point seven percent that Microsoft's MSN Search had. By 0:14:51.680 --> 0:14:54.760 May twenty twelve, Yahoo was down to just thirteen point 0:14:54.800 --> 0:14:58.320 four percent and had shrunk for the previous nine consecutive months, 0:14:58.440 --> 0:15:01.400 and was being beaten by Eva, the newly released BING. 0:15:02.400 --> 0:15:05.240 That same year, Yahoo had the largest layoffs in its 0:15:05.240 --> 0:15:08.800 corporate history, shedding two thousand employees, or fourteen percent of 0:15:08.800 --> 0:15:13.640 its overall workforce. The man who deposed, Ben Gomes, someone 0:15:13.640 --> 0:15:16.360 who worked on Google Search from its very beginnings, was 0:15:16.400 --> 0:15:18.760 so shit at his job that in two thousand and nine, 0:15:18.840 --> 0:15:22.120 Yahoo effectively threw in the towel on its own search tech, 0:15:22.400 --> 0:15:25.800 instead choosing to license Bing's engine in a ten year deal. 0:15:26.440 --> 0:15:29.480 If we take a long view of things, this likely 0:15:29.520 --> 0:15:32.520 precipitated the overall decline of the company, which went from 0:15:32.560 --> 0:15:34.840 being worth one hundred and twenty five billion dollars at 0:15:34.840 --> 0:15:37.440 the peak of the dot com boom to being sold 0:15:37.440 --> 0:15:40.560 to Verizon for four point eight billion dollars in twenty seventeen, 0:15:40.880 --> 0:15:43.960 which is roughly a three thousand square foot apartment in 0:15:44.000 --> 0:15:47.920 San Francisco. With Search no longer a priority in making 0:15:48.040 --> 0:15:51.160 less money for the company, Yahoo decided to pivot into 0:15:51.200 --> 0:15:54.160 Web two point zero and original content, making sum bats 0:15:54.160 --> 0:15:56.680 that paid off, but far far too many that did not. 0:15:57.160 --> 0:16:00.320 It spent one point one billion dollars on Tumblr in 0:16:00.360 --> 0:16:03.080 twenty thirteen, only for Verizon to sell it for just 0:16:03.080 --> 0:16:05.840 three million dollars in twenty nineteen. It put Zimbra in 0:16:05.880 --> 0:16:08.600 two thousand and seven ostensibly to complete with the new 0:16:08.640 --> 0:16:11.240 Google Apps productivity suite, only to sell it for a 0:16:11.400 --> 0:16:14.280 reported fraction of the original purchase price to VMware a 0:16:14.320 --> 0:16:19.360 few years later. That's not his fault, but nevertheless, Yahoo 0:16:19.400 --> 0:16:22.680 was a company without a mission, a purpose, or an objective. Nobody, 0:16:23.080 --> 0:16:25.800 and I'll speculate even though his leading the company really 0:16:25.880 --> 0:16:28.880 knew what it was and what it did. Anyway, just 0:16:28.920 --> 0:16:31.320 a big shout out right now to Kura Swisher, who 0:16:31.320 --> 0:16:34.360 referred to Pradaka as well respected. When he moved from 0:16:34.440 --> 0:16:39.320 Yahoo to Google. He absolutely nailed at Kara bang up job. 0:16:40.520 --> 0:16:42.760 In an interview with zd and ets Dan Farber from 0:16:42.800 --> 0:16:45.840 two thousand and five, Ragavan spoke of his intent to 0:16:45.880 --> 0:16:49.400 align the commercial incentives of a billion content providers with 0:16:49.520 --> 0:16:52.280 social good intent while at Yahoo, and his eagerness to 0:16:52.360 --> 0:16:54.240 inspire the audience to give more data. 0:16:54.960 --> 0:16:58.880 What anyway before that, It's it's actually hard. 0:16:58.680 --> 0:17:01.440 To find out exactly what Ragava and did, though according 0:17:01.440 --> 0:17:05.000 to ZDNA, he spent fourteen years doing search and data 0:17:05.040 --> 0:17:10.960 mining research ibm MM. In April twenty eleven, The Guardian 0:17:11.040 --> 0:17:14.399 ran an interview with Ragavan that called him Yahoo's secret weapon, 0:17:14.840 --> 0:17:18.679 describing his plan to make rigorous scientific research and practice 0:17:18.800 --> 0:17:22.280 to inform Yahoo's business from email to advertising, and how 0:17:22.400 --> 0:17:25.960 under then CEO Carol Bart's the focus had shifted to 0:17:26.040 --> 0:17:29.840 the direct development of new products. It speaks of Ragavan's 0:17:29.880 --> 0:17:33.960 scientific approach and his steady process based logic to innovation 0:17:34.440 --> 0:17:37.480 that is very different to the common perception the ideas 0:17:37.480 --> 0:17:40.760 and development are more about luck and spontaneity. A sentence 0:17:40.760 --> 0:17:42.760 that I'm only reading to you because I really need 0:17:42.800 --> 0:17:45.600 you to hear how stupid it sounds and how specious 0:17:45.640 --> 0:17:47.000 some of the tech press. 0:17:47.000 --> 0:17:47.399 Used to be. 0:17:48.800 --> 0:17:52.320 Frankly, this entire article is ridiculous, so utterly vacuous, that 0:17:52.320 --> 0:17:54.880 I'm actually astonished I don't want to name the reporter. 0:17:55.040 --> 0:17:55.879 I feel bad. 0:17:57.119 --> 0:18:00.600 What about Ragavan's career made this feel right? How has 0:18:00.680 --> 0:18:03.600 nobody connected these thoughts before? I have a day job, 0:18:03.640 --> 0:18:06.080 I run a PR firm, I am a blogger with 0:18:06.160 --> 0:18:10.679 a podcast, and I'm the one who said, yeah, okay, 0:18:10.800 --> 0:18:13.280 drag Uller is now the CEO of the Blood Bank. 0:18:13.520 --> 0:18:16.240 Nobody saw this. Nobody saw this at the time. I 0:18:16.320 --> 0:18:18.760 just feel a bit crazy. I feel a bit crazy. 0:18:18.800 --> 0:18:22.040 But to be clear, this was something written several years 0:18:22.080 --> 0:18:26.159 after Yahoo had licensed its search technology to Microsoft in 0:18:26.200 --> 0:18:29.719 a financial deal that the next CEO, Marissa Maya, who 0:18:29.800 --> 0:18:34.000 replaced Barts, was still angry about for years. Ragavan's reign 0:18:34.080 --> 0:18:36.800 as what zd Neat referred to as the search Master 0:18:37.400 --> 0:18:41.520 was one so successful that it ended up being replaced 0:18:41.520 --> 0:18:43.760 by a search engine that not a single person in 0:18:43.800 --> 0:18:48.520 the world enjoys saying out loud. The Guardian article ran 0:18:48.640 --> 0:18:52.680 exactly one year before dramatic layoffs at Yahoo that involved 0:18:52.720 --> 0:18:56.040 firing entire divisions worth of people, and four months before 0:18:56.080 --> 0:18:59.199 Carol Barts would be fired by telephone by then chairman 0:18:59.280 --> 0:19:03.399 Roy bost. Her replacement Scott Thompson, who previously served as 0:19:03.440 --> 0:19:05.919 president of PayPal. Would last a whole five months in 0:19:05.960 --> 0:19:09.520 the role before he was replaced by former Google executive 0:19:09.560 --> 0:19:12.199 Marissa Mayer, in part because it emerged he lied on 0:19:12.240 --> 0:19:15.680 his resume about having a computer science degree. 0:19:15.960 --> 0:19:18.479 Hey, Brobaka, did you not notice that anyway? Whatever? 0:19:32.400 --> 0:19:35.320 Barts joined Yahoo in two thousand and nine, so about 0:19:35.320 --> 0:19:39.000 four years into Broba Kha's reign of terror, I guess, 0:19:40.080 --> 0:19:42.440 and she joined in the aftermath of its previous CEO, 0:19:42.560 --> 0:19:45.439 Jerry Yang, refusing to sell the company to Microsoft for 0:19:45.440 --> 0:19:48.400 forty five billion dollars. In her first year, she laid 0:19:48.400 --> 0:19:50.840 off hundreds of people and struck a deal that I've 0:19:50.840 --> 0:19:55.000 mentioned before to power Yahoo Search using Microsoft's being search 0:19:55.040 --> 0:19:57.679 engine Tech, with Microsoft paying Yahoo eighty eight percent of 0:19:57.680 --> 0:20:00.760 the revenue a game from searches. A deal made Yahoo 0:20:00.760 --> 0:20:03.040 a couple hundred million dollars for handing over the keys 0:20:03.080 --> 0:20:05.960 and the take to its most high traffic platform. As 0:20:06.000 --> 0:20:10.000 I previously stated, when Brabakhar Ragavan, Yahoo's secret weapon was 0:20:10.040 --> 0:20:13.000 doing his work, Yahoo Search was so valuable that it 0:20:13.040 --> 0:20:17.480 was replaced by Bing its sole value. In fact, I 0:20:17.520 --> 0:20:20.360 mean maybe I'm being a little unfair. There's a way 0:20:20.400 --> 0:20:22.960 of looking at this that you could say that Yahoo's 0:20:23.080 --> 0:20:25.560 entire value at the end of his career was driven 0:20:25.560 --> 0:20:29.520 by nostalgia and association with days before he worked there. Anyway, 0:20:30.480 --> 0:20:32.880 thanks to the state of modern search, it's actually very, 0:20:33.000 --> 0:20:35.760 very difficult to find much about Ragavan's history. It took 0:20:35.800 --> 0:20:39.240 me hours of digging through Google and at one point 0:20:39.240 --> 0:20:43.199 being embarrassingly to find three or four articles that went 0:20:43.240 --> 0:20:45.560 into any depth about him. But from what I've gleaned, 0:20:45.600 --> 0:20:49.280 his expertise lies primarily in failing upwards ascending through the 0:20:49.320 --> 0:20:53.440 ranks of technology on the momentum from the explosions he's coursed. 0:20:54.200 --> 0:20:56.679 In a wide interview from twenty twenty one, GLAD handler 0:20:56.720 --> 0:20:59.520 Stephen Levy said Ragavan isn't the CEO of Google, he 0:20:59.600 --> 0:21:02.000 just run the place, and described his addition to the 0:21:02.040 --> 0:21:05.600 company as a move from research to management. While Levy 0:21:05.600 --> 0:21:08.560 calls him a world class computer scientist who has authored 0:21:08.560 --> 0:21:11.520 definitive text in the field, which is true, he also 0:21:11.560 --> 0:21:15.560 describes Ragavan as choosing a management track, which definitely tracks 0:21:15.560 --> 0:21:19.080 with everything I found out about him. Ragavan proudly declares 0:21:19.119 --> 0:21:21.720 that Google's third party ad tech plays a critical role 0:21:21.880 --> 0:21:24.560 in keeping journalism alive, and a really shitty answer to 0:21:24.560 --> 0:21:26.879 a question that was also made at a time when 0:21:26.960 --> 0:21:31.439 he was in aggressively incentivizing search engine optimized content, and 0:21:31.520 --> 0:21:33.679 a year after he'd deposed someone who actually gave a 0:21:33.680 --> 0:21:38.720 shit about search. Under Ragavan, Google has become less reliable 0:21:38.760 --> 0:21:41.520 and it is dominated by search engine optimization and just 0:21:41.680 --> 0:21:45.280 outright spam. And I've said this before, but look, we 0:21:45.359 --> 0:21:48.199 complain about the state of Twitter under Elon Musk and 0:21:48.320 --> 0:21:52.399 justifiably he's a vile, anti, semi racist bigger. We all 0:21:52.440 --> 0:21:56.800 know this. It's fully true. We can say a million times. However, 0:21:56.880 --> 0:22:01.080 I'd argue that Ragavan, by extension some Ar Pashai deserve 0:22:01.920 --> 0:22:07.639 one hundred times more criticism. They've done unfathomable damage to society. 0:22:07.680 --> 0:22:11.040 You really can't fix the damage they've been doing and 0:22:11.080 --> 0:22:13.600 the damage they'll continue to do, especially as we go 0:22:13.640 --> 0:22:17.440 into an election. Ragavan and his cronies worked to oust 0:22:17.480 --> 0:22:19.920 Ben Gomes, a man who dedicated a good portion of 0:22:19.960 --> 0:22:23.520 his life to making the world's information more accessible, in 0:22:23.560 --> 0:22:26.639 the process burning the Library of Alexandria to the goddamn 0:22:26.680 --> 0:22:29.200 ground so that Sundar Pashai could make more than two 0:22:29.240 --> 0:22:33.120 hundred million dollars a year, and Ragavan a Manager High 0:22:33.160 --> 0:22:36.240 by Sundar Pashai, a former McKinzie man. The King of 0:22:36.320 --> 0:22:40.200 Managers is an example of everything wrong with the tech industry. 0:22:40.960 --> 0:22:44.080