Edward Zitron has been reading all of google’s internal emails that have been released as evidence in the DOJ’s antitrust case against google.
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 the VP of Engineering, Search and Ads on Google properties, had called a “code yellow” for search revenue due to, and I quote, “steady weakness in the daily numbers” and a likeliness that it would end the quarter significantly behind.
HackerNews thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40133976
MetaFilter thread: https://www.metafilter.com/203456/The-core-query-softness-continues-without-mitigation
Removed by mod
What it proves is being a greedy self serving prick that will do anything for a buck if given the chance is not the exclusive domain of white people. Anyone can be an incompetent executive.
Did you see my other comments?
Google under Brin and Page introduced many useful products, Microsoft became a household name under Gates, same with Photoshop.
What have these CEOs done after they took the reins? All I can think of is pushing for ‘cloud’.
Pichai in particular I dislike the most. He was heading the Android team. But last few years Android feels stagnant. He could’ve done much more for his supposedly passion project as the CEO of Alphabet.
That’s reasonable, but you’re forgetting the part where the CEOs don’t want to be the CEO anymore. They’ve got billions and want to spend it doing shit like wifi weather balloons or self driving cars. So they look for someone to replace them, and that replacement doesn’t have the tenure in the position to say “stop the bullshit, I want good products, not half baked ‘revenue generators’”.
But they do have an army of MBAs in the CFOs office telling them quarterly ad revenue is down 3% year over year, which means the world is ending, so they need to pump those numbers while everyone cashes out their stock before the rest of the stock holders realize the plan is to leave them now holding the bag for the now worthless-page-of-ads-before-search-results company.
It’s funny how people will find anything to blame except for the problem itself when the problem is capitalism.
And it’s not like we’ve seen anything odd happen when people systematically blame a particular race/religion/nationality in history… /S
It’s not funny. Our culture tells us to bow to authority. Be it old people in house and neighbourhood, or boss at work. We are not supposed to criticize them lest we get labelled troublemaker. Just keep your head down and walk down the beaten path.
These CEOs are just a shining example of these.
I’m still not sure you got it.
There is no issue in criticizing these CEOs. They are horrible indeed. But they are like this and they have been promoted to this spot because we’re in a system (capitalism) which values this behaviour. Not because they’re Indian…
And I’ll tell you what I told others.
Come here and try to live like how we live and you’ll understand first hand what I’m trying to say.
Don’t worry guys, it’s not racist because he said they’re “his people”.
It sure feels racist. :/
This reads like, “the Jews run the media and the banks. Trust me, I’m a Jew.”
Broadly applicable cultural norms aren’t a thing?
Please come here to Mumbai, try to live as a wagie, and see how far can you go it before the grind breaks you.
I think this is just because there are a good number of Indian people in tech. Usually it’s a white person doing this and we hardly notice their skin colour (because of racism).
India actually has a pretty healthy history of workers banding together in collective action, and coming together in mutual aid. I’d elaborate but my social media minutes are about to run out
Yes, as grunt workers (myself included).
I legit can’t recall many Indian innovators in tech. Even most tech companies here in India are copies of American companies.
Which again brings me back to my question. What have these CEOs done during their tenure other than rent seeking?
I’ve no idea why, but Amazon in particular has a huge number of Indian managers. It’s never particularly bothered me, but I do see this sentiment amongst other people of Indian origin - often the most critical of Indian managers.
Is there something specific about Indian leadership that pushes growth above anything else? The sentiment in Amazon is one of ruthlessness, and pushing growth and positive short-term metrics above everything else.
Trust me, Indian managers are considered ruthless by most fellow indians from what I heard. Our workspace culture is quite toxic compared to the west.
Look at this for a bit more insight
Yes. They’ll micromanage the shit out of everything and throw you under the bus to save their own skin.
And the mods have removed my comment for ‘Rule 3’. What the fuck.
Ah yes, Jerry Dischler, the Indian.
That was an ad guy doing ad guy things. Why the fuck the product guy do what he did? Cause he didn’t give a shit about his domain.
Edit: lmao reading it again looks like the ad guy cared more about the search than the actual search guy. Makes you look like a right dingus.
Have you spent any amount of time around software engineers who aren’t from India? You may be idealizing us - a lot.
I’ve worked extensively with devs from NY, SF and Toronto (where I’m located). The ideal “innovative” “passionate” devs are maybe 2 to a company. The rest just want to put food on the table, buy a house, buy a car, go on vacation and fuck off at the end of the day. How do you think fb and Google built their privacy nightmares? By exclusively hiring Indians? Or by dangling enough money at devs of all races who don’t give a shit?
Pretty much every single one of my colleagues will gladly write code to turn the product into complete dog shit if the “ad guy” shows up with a million dollar paycheck. What do I care? It’s not my baby. My actual real life baby’s future matters more to me than the future of whatever product my current company is working on.
Being an Indian yourself does not absolve you of your racist tirades against other Indians. Learn to be empathetic towards others. If I, a privileged dude-bro, can understand why people who grow up with extreme resource contention and competition behave the way they do, then you should get it too.
Legit query. and it’s true as a stereotype of many cultures.
And this particular aspect is also at the heart of global capitalism that is wreaking havoc on the world.