Wanna listen to this story instead? Check out this week's Better Offline podcast, "The Man That Destroyed Google Search," available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. This is the story of how Google Search died, and the people responsible for killing it. The story begins

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

  • raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    6 months ago

    Overall the reporting is interesting, but weird comments like this show his naked disdain for everyone and everything in the tech industry which does not make him a particularly trustworthy source.

    I’d disagree - what this shows is only disdain for everyone who’s fucking up technologies for the sake of profit. And I’m with him there, I found it refreshing to read an accurate account of what pieces of shit work behind the scenes in the industry. Not that I am surprised, but the account of what seems to have happened in detail and in that sequence was new to me.

    • masterspace@lemmy.caEnglish
      01·
      6 months ago

      I’d disagree - what this shows is only disdain for everyone who’s fucking up technologies for the sake of profit.

      Well you can disagree all you want but I don’t see how you can read his snarky comments and think that.

      His criticism of the code yellow is not because anyone involved in the code yellow procedure, invention, or naming deserves anything. He just hates everyone in tech so much that a whimsical name must be a bastard move, and not just people at their job trying to make the most of it.

      I found it refreshing to read an accurate account of what pieces of shit work behind the scenes in the industry

      Yeah, cause you’re accepting his characterizations of everyone as bastards at face value despite not knowing them and despite knowing that Ed Zirtron thinks everyone is a bastard because it makes his world simpler. Yes it is “refreshing” to stop thinking about complex chains of actions and consequences and just think “he’s an evil bastard man and it’s all his fault”.

      • raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        6 months ago

        “[considering] everyone as bastards” is a strawman argument. Furthermore, the people described are assholes by the evidence provided, assuming the evidence is noy falsified.

        • masterspace@lemmy.caEnglish
          01·
          6 months ago

          Furthermore, the people described are assholes by the evidence provided

          No, far from it. Noone involved with the naming of the code yellow name has any evidence of bastardry presented at all.