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

  • masterspace@lemmy.ca
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    11 months ago

    It overall seems like a good article but this is why I kind of hate Ed Zirtron’s reporting:

    For those unfamiliar with Google’s internal scientology-esque jargon, let me explain. A “code yellow” isn’t, as you might think, a crisis of moderate severity. The yellow, according to Steven Levy’s tell-all book about Google, refers to — and I promise that I’m not making this up — the color of a tank top that former VP of Engineering Wayne Rosing used to wear during his time at the company. It’s essentially the equivalent of DEFCON 1 and activates, as Levy explained, a war room-like situation

    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.

    Like “oh my god, how dare a company choose an arbitrary alert system based on a quirky influential engineer’s practices, what crazy psychos!”

    If he sees the code yellow tank top thing as some crazy ridiculous thing that no company should do, then I can’t really trust his interpretation of the rest of the emails and documents etc.

    Later in the article, he boils everything down to literally “Heroes vs Villains”, and maybe in this case both of them are archetypal representations of those roles, but based on his appearances on behind the bastards it feels more like he always needs to boil everything down to black and white, good vs evil, bastard vs non bastard, with nothing in between, which again, makes it hard to trust his overall interpretations of what he’s read.

    • jqubed@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      It’s an interesting piece and starts in the traditional journalism mold, but moves much more into opinion and blog. Like going from NewsHour to Last Week Tonight. That’s not to say it’s not an interesting read or he’s not supporting his argument, but it is about persuading, not just reporting. Of course, I haven’t actually gone through all his references to see if they’re mischaracterized or taken out of context.

      • Moneo@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        I agree with both your comments, but there’s something so satisfying about reading vitriol about a type of person you fucking hate. I kinda liked that he doesn’t hide his bias or disdain for these people.

    • TurtleJoe@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      It seems clear to me that he hates the people that are ruining the tech industry, ripping off customers, and pumping out shitty projects for short term stuck pumps, and he takes every opportunity to shit on those people and point out their idiosyncrasies. That’s pretty much every tech CEO these days.

      It’s also pretty clear to me that he believes in the promise of the industry, and thinks that workers deserve better than the people that they work for.

    • Telodzrum@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      It’s like a reverse Kara Swisher. Which, though I hate her work and her complete lack of integrity, I don’t want. I totally get and agree with your take.