All Zone Media. Hello, and welcome to Better Offline. I'm your host ed zig Tron. Well, and in the next two episodes, I'm going to tell you the names some of the people responsible for destroying the Internet. And I'm going to start on February fifth, twenty nineteen, when Ben Gomes, Google's former head of Search, well, he had a problem. Jerry Dishler, then the VP and GM of Ads at Google, and Shiv Van Carterman, then the VP of Engineering Search and Ads on Google Properties, had called something called a code yellow for search revenue due to and I quote emails that came out as part of Google's anti trust hearing steady weakness in the daily numbers and a likeliness that it would end the quarter significantly behind in metrics that kind of unclear for those unfamiliar with Google's, in turn, a kind of scientology esque jargon which means most people, let me explain, a code yellow isn't a terrible need to piss or some sort of crisis of moderate severity. The yellow, according to Stephen Levy's Tell All book about Google, refers to and I promise this is not a joke, the color of a tank top that a former VP of Engineering called Wayne Rosling used to wear during his time at the company. It's essentially the equivalent of deafcom one and activates, as Levy explained, a war room like situation where workers are pulled from their desks and into a conference room where they tackle the problem as a top priority. Any other projects or concerns are sidelined and independently. I've heard there are other colors like purple. I'm not going to get into that, though, it's quite boring and irrelevant to this situation. In emails released as part of the Department of Justices antitrust case against Google, as a previously mentioned Dishler laid out several contributing factors. Search query growth was significantly behind forecast, the timing of revenue launches was significantly behind, and he had this vague worry that several advertiser specific in sector weaknesses existed in search. Now I want to cover something because I've messed up, and I really want to be clear about this. I've previously and erroneously referred to the code yellow as something that Gomes raised as a means of calling attention to the proximity of Google's ad side getting a little too close to search. I'm afraid the truth is extremely depressing and so much grimmar. The code yellow was actually the rumble of the goddamn rot economy, with Google's revenue arms sounding the alarm that its golden goose wasn't laying enough eggs. Gomes, a Googler of nineteen years that basically built the foundation of modern search engines, should go down as one of the few people in tech that actually fought for an actual principle, and he was destroyed by a guy called Prabaka Ragavan, a computer scientist class traitor that sided with the management consultancy sect. More confusingly, one of their problems was that there was insufficient growth in queries, as in the amount of things that people were asking Google. It's a bit like if Ford decided that things were going poorly because their drivers weren't putting enough goddamn miles on their trucks. This whole story has personally upset me, and I think you're going to hear that in this but going through these emails is just very depressing.

All Zone Media. Hello, and welcome to Better Offline. I'm your host ed zig Tron. Well, and in the next two episodes, I'm going to tell you the names some of the people responsible for destroying the Internet. And I'm going to start on February fifth, twenty nineteen, when Ben Gomes, Google's former head of Search, well, he had a problem. Jerry Dishler, then the VP and GM of Ads at Google, and Shiv Van Carterman, then the VP of Engineering Search and Ads on Google Properties, had called something called a code yellow for search revenue due to and I quote emails that came out as part of Google's anti trust hearing steady weakness in the daily numbers and a likeliness that it would end the quarter significantly behind in metrics that kind of unclear for those unfamiliar with Google's, in turn, a kind of scientology esque jargon which means most people, let me explain, a code yellow isn't a terrible need to piss or some sort of crisis of moderate severity. The yellow, according to Stephen Levy's Tell All book about Google, refers to and I promise this is not a joke, the color of a tank top that a former VP of Engineering called Wayne Rosling used to wear during his time at the company. It's essentially the equivalent of deafcom one and activates, as Levy explained, a war room like situation where workers are pulled from their desks and into a conference room where they tackle the problem as a top priority. Any other projects or concerns are sidelined and independently. I've heard there are other colors like purple. I'm not going to get into that, though, it's quite boring and irrelevant to this situation. In emails released as part of the Department of Justices antitrust case against Google, as a previously mentioned Dishler laid out several contributing factors. Search query growth was significantly behind forecast, the timing of revenue launches was significantly behind, and he had this vague worry that several advertiser specific in sector weaknesses existed in search. Now I want to cover something because I've messed up, and I really want to be clear about this. I've previously and erroneously referred to the code yellow as something that Gomes raised as a means of calling attention to the proximity of Google's ad side getting a little too close to search. I'm afraid the truth is extremely depressing and so much grimmar. The code yellow was actually the rumble of the goddamn rot economy, with Google's revenue arms sounding the alarm that its golden goose wasn't laying enough eggs. Gomes, a Googler of nineteen years that basically built the foundation of modern search engines, should go down as one of the few people in tech that actually fought for an actual principle, and he was destroyed by a guy called Prabaka Ragavan, a computer scientist class traitor that sided with the management consultancy sect. More confusingly, one of their problems was that there was insufficient growth in queries, as in the amount of things that people were asking Google. It's a bit like if Ford decided that things were going poorly because their drivers weren't putting enough goddamn miles on their trucks. This whole story has personally upset me, and I think you're going to hear that in this but going through these emails is just very depressing.

Anyway.

Anyway.

A few days beforehand, on February first, twenty nineteen, Kristen Gill, then Google's VP business finance officer had emailed Shashi Thakker, then Google's VP of Engineering, Search and Discover, saying that the ADS team had been considering a code yellow to close the search gap it was seeing, vaguely referring to how critical that growth was to an unnamed company plan. To be clear, this email was in response to Thaker stating that there is nothing that the search team could do to operate at the fidelity of growth that the ADS department had demanded. Shashy Forward did the email to Gomes asking if there's any way to discuss this with Sandar Pashai, Google CEO, and declared that there was no way he would sign up for a high fidelity business metric for daily active users on search. Saker also said something that I've been thinking about constantly since I read these emails, that there was a good reason that Google's founders separated search from ads. I want you to remember that line for later. A day later, on February second, twenty nineteen, Thacker and Gomes shared their anxieties with Nick Fox, a vice president of Search and Google assistant, entering a multiple day long debate about Google's sun lust for growth. This thread is a dark window into the world of growth focus Tech, where the Kherr listed the multiple points of disconnection between ads and Search, discussing how the search team wasn't able to finally optimize engagement on Google without hacking it, a term that means effectively tricking users into spending more time on a site, and that doing so would lead them to and I quote, abandoned work on efficient journeys. In one email, Fox adds that there was a pretty big disconnect between what finance and ads wants and what Search was doing. Every part of this story pisses me off so much. When Gomes pushed back on the multiple requests for growth, Fox added that all three of them were responsible for Search and that Search was and again I quote, the revenue engine of the company, and that bartering with the ads and finance teams was now potentially the new reality of their jobs. On February sixth, twenty nineteen, Gomes said that he believed that Search was getting too close to the money and ended his email by saying that he was concerned that growth is all that Google was thinking about. On March twenty second, twenty nineteen, Google VP of Product Management Darshan Cantac would declare the end of the Code Yellow. The thread mostly consisted of congratulatory emails until Gomes made the mistake of responding congratulating everyone, saying that the plans architected as part of the Code Yellow would do well throughout the year. Enter Probarka Ragavan, then Google's head of Ads and the true mastermind behind the Code Yellow, who would respond curtly saying that the current revenue targets were addressed by heroic RPM engineering and that the core query softness continued without mitigation, a very clunky way of saying that despite these changes, query growth was not happening at the rate he needed it to. A day later, Gomes emailed Fox Andhaker an email he intended to center Ragavan. He led by saying that he was annoyed both personally and on behalf of the search team. In this very long email, he explained in arduous detail how one might increase engagement with Google Search, but specifically added that they could increase queries quite easily in the short term, but only in user negative ways, like turning off spell correction or ranking improvements, or placing refinements effectively labels all over the page, adding that it was possible that there are trade offs here between the different kinds of user negativity caused by engagement hacking, that he was deeply, deeply uncomfortable with this. He also added that this was the reason he didn't believe that queries, as in the amount of the things with people searching on Google, were a good metric to measure search, and that the best defense against the weaknesses of queries was to create compelling user experiences that make users want to come back.

A few days beforehand, on February first, twenty nineteen, Kristen Gill, then Google's VP business finance officer had emailed Shashi Thakker, then Google's VP of Engineering, Search and Discover, saying that the ADS team had been considering a code yellow to close the search gap it was seeing, vaguely referring to how critical that growth was to an unnamed company plan. To be clear, this email was in response to Thaker stating that there is nothing that the search team could do to operate at the fidelity of growth that the ADS department had demanded. Shashy Forward did the email to Gomes asking if there's any way to discuss this with Sandar Pashai, Google CEO, and declared that there was no way he would sign up for a high fidelity business metric for daily active users on search. Saker also said something that I've been thinking about constantly since I read these emails, that there was a good reason that Google's founders separated search from ads. I want you to remember that line for later. A day later, on February second, twenty nineteen, Thacker and Gomes shared their anxieties with Nick Fox, a vice president of Search and Google assistant, entering a multiple day long debate about Google's sun lust for growth. This thread is a dark window into the world of growth focus Tech, where the Kherr listed the multiple points of disconnection between ads and Search, discussing how the search team wasn't able to finally optimize engagement on Google without hacking it, a term that means effectively tricking users into spending more time on a site, and that doing so would lead them to and I quote, abandoned work on efficient journeys. In one email, Fox adds that there was a pretty big disconnect between what finance and ads wants and what Search was doing. Every part of this story pisses me off so much. When Gomes pushed back on the multiple requests for growth, Fox added that all three of them were responsible for Search and that Search was and again I quote, the revenue engine of the company, and that bartering with the ads and finance teams was now potentially the new reality of their jobs. On February sixth, twenty nineteen, Gomes said that he believed that Search was getting too close to the money and ended his email by saying that he was concerned that growth is all that Google was thinking about. On March twenty second, twenty nineteen, Google VP of Product Management Darshan Cantac would declare the end of the Code Yellow. The thread mostly consisted of congratulatory emails until Gomes made the mistake of responding congratulating everyone, saying that the plans architected as part of the Code Yellow would do well throughout the year. Enter Probarka Ragavan, then Google's head of Ads and the true mastermind behind the Code Yellow, who would respond curtly saying that the current revenue targets were addressed by heroic RPM engineering and that the core query softness continued without mitigation, a very clunky way of saying that despite these changes, query growth was not happening at the rate he needed it to. A day later, Gomes emailed Fox Andhaker an email he intended to center Ragavan. He led by saying that he was annoyed both personally and on behalf of the search team. In this very long email, he explained in arduous detail how one might increase engagement with Google Search, but specifically added that they could increase queries quite easily in the short term, but only in user negative ways, like turning off spell correction or ranking improvements, or placing refinements effectively labels all over the page, adding that it was possible that there are trade offs here between the different kinds of user negativity caused by engagement hacking, that he was deeply, deeply uncomfortable with this. He also added that this was the reason he didn't believe that queries, as in the amount of the things with people searching on Google, were a good metric to measure search, and that the best defense against the weaknesses of queries was to create compelling user experiences that make users want to come back.

Crazy idea there, what if the product was good not good enough?

Crazy idea there, what if the product was good not good enough?

Of prabaka, so little bit of history about Google here. They regularly throughout the year do core updates to search. These are updates that change the algorithm. Let's say, okay, we're going to suppress this kind of thing. We can elevate this kind of thing. And they are actually the reason that search changes. It's why certain sites suddenly disappear or reappear. It's why sites get a ton of traffic, some don't get any, and so on and so forth.

Of prabaka, so little bit of history about Google here. They regularly throughout the year do core updates to search. These are updates that change the algorithm. Let's say, okay, we're going to suppress this kind of thing. We can elevate this kind of thing. And they are actually the reason that search changes. It's why certain sites suddenly disappear or reappear. It's why sites get a ton of traffic, some don't get any, and so on and so forth.

But they do a lot of them. The one that's really.

But they do a lot of them. The one that's really.

Interesting and a little bastard and I went and looked through pretty much the last decade of these, the one that stood out to me it was the March twenty nineteen core update to Search, which happened about a week before the end of the code yellow, meaning that it's very likely that this was a result of Prabaka's bullshit. So this was expected to be one of the largest updates to Search in a very long time, and I'm quoting Search Engine Journal there. Yet when it launched, many found that the update mostly rolled back changes and traffic was increasing to sites that had been suppressed by previous updates, like Google Search's Penguin update from twenty twelve that specifically targeted spami search results.

Interesting and a little bastard and I went and looked through pretty much the last decade of these, the one that stood out to me it was the March twenty nineteen core update to Search, which happened about a week before the end of the code yellow, meaning that it's very likely that this was a result of Prabaka's bullshit. So this was expected to be one of the largest updates to Search in a very long time, and I'm quoting Search Engine Journal there. Yet when it launched, many found that the update mostly rolled back changes and traffic was increasing to sites that had been suppressed by previous updates, like Google Search's Penguin update from twenty twelve that specifically targeted spami search results.

There were others that were.

There were others that were.

Seeing traffic as well from an update that happened on the first of August twenty eighteen that was a few months after Gomes became head of Search.

Seeing traffic as well from an update that happened on the first of August twenty eighteen that was a few months after Gomes became head of Search.

While I'm guessing here, I really don't know. I do not work for Google.

While I'm guessing here, I really don't know. I do not work for Google.

I do not have friends there. I think the timing of the March twenty nineteen core update, along with the traffic increases the previously suppressed sites that one hundred percent were spamy seo nonsense. I think these suggest that Google's response to the co jello was to roll back changes that were made to maintain the quality of search. A few months later, in May twenty nineteen, Google would roll out a redesign of how ads were shown on Google Search, specifically on mobile, replacing the bright green AD label and URL color on ads with a tiny, little, bolded black note that said ad in the smallest font you could possibly put there, with the link looking otherwise identical to a regular search link. I guess that's how they managed to start hitting their numbers, hah. And then in January twenty twenty, Google would bring this change to desktop, and the vergins John Porter would suggest that it made Google's ads look just like search results now awesome. Five months later, a little over a year after the code yellow situation, Google would make Probakar Ragavan the head of Google Search, with Jerry Dishler taking his place as the head of Ads. After nearly twenty years of building Google Search, Gomes would be relegated to the spe VP of Education at Google. Domes, who was a critical part of the original team that made Google Search work, who has been credited with establishing the culture of the world's largest and most important search engine, was chased out by a growth hungry managerial type, several of them actually led by Probagar Ragavan, a management consultant wearing an engineer costume. As a side note, by the way, I use the term management consultant there as a pejorative while he exhibits all the same being counting morally young guided behaviors of a management consultant. From what I can tell, Ragavan has never actually worked in that particular sector of the economy.

I do not have friends there. I think the timing of the March twenty nineteen core update, along with the traffic increases the previously suppressed sites that one hundred percent were spamy seo nonsense. I think these suggest that Google's response to the co jello was to roll back changes that were made to maintain the quality of search. A few months later, in May twenty nineteen, Google would roll out a redesign of how ads were shown on Google Search, specifically on mobile, replacing the bright green AD label and URL color on ads with a tiny, little, bolded black note that said ad in the smallest font you could possibly put there, with the link looking otherwise identical to a regular search link. I guess that's how they managed to start hitting their numbers, hah. And then in January twenty twenty, Google would bring this change to desktop, and the vergins John Porter would suggest that it made Google's ads look just like search results now awesome. Five months later, a little over a year after the code yellow situation, Google would make Probakar Ragavan the head of Google Search, with Jerry Dishler taking his place as the head of Ads. After nearly twenty years of building Google Search, Gomes would be relegated to the spe VP of Education at Google. Domes, who was a critical part of the original team that made Google Search work, who has been credited with establishing the culture of the world's largest and most important search engine, was chased out by a growth hungry managerial type, several of them actually led by Probagar Ragavan, a management consultant wearing an engineer costume. As a side note, by the way, I use the term management consultant there as a pejorative while he exhibits all the same being counting morally young guided behaviors of a management consultant. From what I can tell, Ragavan has never actually worked in that particular sector of the economy.

But you know who has.

But you know who has.

San Dhar Pishai, the CEO of Google, who previously worked at McKinsey, arguably the most morally abhorrent company that's ever existed, having played roles both in the two thousand and eight financial crisis, where it encouraged banks to load up on debt and floored mortgage backed securities, and the ongoing opioord crisis, where it effectively advised Perdue Farmer on how to growth hack sales of oxy content and extremely addictive painkiller. McKinsey has paid nearly one billion dollars over several settlements due to its work with Perdue. But I'm getting sidetracked, but one last point. McKinsey is actively anti labor. When a company brings in a McKinsey consultant, they're often there to advise on how to cut costs, which inevitably means layoffs and outsourcing. McKinsey is to the middle class. What fleshy in bacteria is the skin. But back to the emails, which are a stark example of the monstrous, disgusting rot economy, the growth that all costs mindset that's dominating the tech ecosystem. And if you take one thing away from this episode, I want it to be the name Prabakar Ragavan and an understanding that there are people responsible for the current state of the Internet. These emails, which I really encourage you to look, and if you go to where's youreed dot at, you'll be able to see a newsletter that has links to them. Well, these emails tell a dramatic story about how Google's finance and advertising teams, led by Ragavan, with the blessing of CEO Sandhar Pashai, the McKinsey guy, actively worked to make Google worse to make the company more money. This is exactly what I mean when I talk about the economy, an illogical, product destroying mindset that turns products you love into torturous frustrating quasi tools that require you to fight the company to get the thing you want. Ben Gomes was instrumental in making Search work both as a product and a business. He joined the company in nineteen ninety nine, a time long before Google established dominance in the field, and the same year when Larry Page and Sergey Britain tried to sell the company to Excite for one million dollars, only to walk away after Vinnard Coosler and Excite investor and co founder of some Microsystems that's now a VC who tried to stop people going to a beach in Halfman Bay, Well, he tried a low ball and with a seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars offer also known as a one hundred square foot apartment in San Francisco. In an interview with Fast Companies Harry McCracken from twenty eighteen, Gomes freyed Google's challenge as taking the page rank algorithm from one machine to a whole bunch of machines, and they weren't very good machines at the time. Despite his impact and tenure, Gomes had only been made head of Search in the middle of twenty eighteen after John Gillanderia moved to Apple to work on its machine learning and AR strategy. Domes had been described as Google's searches are beloved for his ability to communicate across Google's many quite decentralized apartments. Every single article I've read about Gomes and his tenure at Google spoke of a man deeply ingrained in the foundation of one of the most important technologies ever made. A man who had dedicated decades to maintaining a product with a and I quote Gomes here guiding light of serving the user and using technology to do that.

San Dhar Pishai, the CEO of Google, who previously worked at McKinsey, arguably the most morally abhorrent company that's ever existed, having played roles both in the two thousand and eight financial crisis, where it encouraged banks to load up on debt and floored mortgage backed securities, and the ongoing opioord crisis, where it effectively advised Perdue Farmer on how to growth hack sales of oxy content and extremely addictive painkiller. McKinsey has paid nearly one billion dollars over several settlements due to its work with Perdue. But I'm getting sidetracked, but one last point. McKinsey is actively anti labor. When a company brings in a McKinsey consultant, they're often there to advise on how to cut costs, which inevitably means layoffs and outsourcing. McKinsey is to the middle class. What fleshy in bacteria is the skin. But back to the emails, which are a stark example of the monstrous, disgusting rot economy, the growth that all costs mindset that's dominating the tech ecosystem. And if you take one thing away from this episode, I want it to be the name Prabakar Ragavan and an understanding that there are people responsible for the current state of the Internet. These emails, which I really encourage you to look, and if you go to where's youreed dot at, you'll be able to see a newsletter that has links to them. Well, these emails tell a dramatic story about how Google's finance and advertising teams, led by Ragavan, with the blessing of CEO Sandhar Pashai, the McKinsey guy, actively worked to make Google worse to make the company more money. This is exactly what I mean when I talk about the economy, an illogical, product destroying mindset that turns products you love into torturous frustrating quasi tools that require you to fight the company to get the thing you want. Ben Gomes was instrumental in making Search work both as a product and a business. He joined the company in nineteen ninety nine, a time long before Google established dominance in the field, and the same year when Larry Page and Sergey Britain tried to sell the company to Excite for one million dollars, only to walk away after Vinnard Coosler and Excite investor and co founder of some Microsystems that's now a VC who tried to stop people going to a beach in Halfman Bay, Well, he tried a low ball and with a seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars offer also known as a one hundred square foot apartment in San Francisco. In an interview with Fast Companies Harry McCracken from twenty eighteen, Gomes freyed Google's challenge as taking the page rank algorithm from one machine to a whole bunch of machines, and they weren't very good machines at the time. Despite his impact and tenure, Gomes had only been made head of Search in the middle of twenty eighteen after John Gillanderia moved to Apple to work on its machine learning and AR strategy. Domes had been described as Google's searches are beloved for his ability to communicate across Google's many quite decentralized apartments. Every single article I've read about Gomes and his tenure at Google spoke of a man deeply ingrained in the foundation of one of the most important technologies ever made. A man who had dedicated decades to maintaining a product with a and I quote Gomes here guiding light of serving the user and using technology to do that.

And when finally given the keys.

And when finally given the keys.

To the kingdom the ability to elevate Google Search even further, he was rap fucked by a series of rotten careerists trying to please Wall Street, led by Provakar Ragavan. Do you want to know what Provacar Ragavan's old job was? What Probacar Ragavan the new head of Google Search, the guy that ran Google Search, that runs Google Search right now, that is running Google Search into the goddamn ground.

To the kingdom the ability to elevate Google Search even further, he was rap fucked by a series of rotten careerists trying to please Wall Street, led by Provakar Ragavan. Do you want to know what Provacar Ragavan's old job was? What Probacar Ragavan the new head of Google Search, the guy that ran Google Search, that runs Google Search right now, that is running Google Search into the goddamn ground.

Do you want to know what his job was?

Do you want to know what his job was?

His job before Google, He was the head of search for god damn Yahoo from two thousand and five through two thy and twelve when he joined the company. When Probakar Ragavan took over Yahoo Search, they held a thirty point four percent market share, not far from Google's own thirty six point nine percent and miles ahead of the fifteen point seven percent that Microsoft's MSN Search had. By May twenty twelve, Yahoo was down to just thirteen point four percent and had shrunk for the previous nine consecutive months, and was being beaten by Eva, the newly released BING. That same year, Yahoo had the largest layoffs in its corporate history, shedding two thousand employees, or fourteen percent of its overall workforce. The man who deposed, Ben Gomes, someone who worked on Google Search from its very beginnings, was so shit at his job that in two thousand and nine, Yahoo effectively threw in the towel on its own search tech, instead choosing to license Bing's engine in a ten year deal. If we take a long view of things, this likely precipitated the overall decline of the company, which went from being worth one hundred and twenty five billion dollars at the peak of the dot com boom to being sold to Verizon for four point eight billion dollars in twenty seventeen, which is roughly a three thousand square foot apartment in San Francisco. With Search no longer a priority in making less money for the company, Yahoo decided to pivot into Web two point zero and original content, making sum bats that paid off, but far far too many that did not. It spent one point one billion dollars on Tumblr in twenty thirteen, only for Verizon to sell it for just three million dollars in twenty nineteen. It put Zimbra in two thousand and seven ostensibly to complete with the new Google Apps productivity suite, only to sell it for a reported fraction of the original purchase price to VMware a few years later. That's not his fault, but nevertheless, Yahoo was a company without a mission, a purpose, or an objective. Nobody, and I'll speculate even though his leading the company really knew what it was and what it did. Anyway, just a big shout out right now to Kura Swisher, who referred to Pradaka as well respected. When he moved from Yahoo to Google. He absolutely nailed at Kara bang up job. In an interview with zd and ets Dan Farber from two thousand and five, Ragavan spoke of his intent to align the commercial incentives of a billion content providers with social good intent while at Yahoo, and his eagerness to inspire the audience to give more data.

His job before Google, He was the head of search for god damn Yahoo from two thousand and five through two thy and twelve when he joined the company. When Probakar Ragavan took over Yahoo Search, they held a thirty point four percent market share, not far from Google's own thirty six point nine percent and miles ahead of the fifteen point seven percent that Microsoft's MSN Search had. By May twenty twelve, Yahoo was down to just thirteen point four percent and had shrunk for the previous nine consecutive months, and was being beaten by Eva, the newly released BING. That same year, Yahoo had the largest layoffs in its corporate history, shedding two thousand employees, or fourteen percent of its overall workforce. The man who deposed, Ben Gomes, someone who worked on Google Search from its very beginnings, was so shit at his job that in two thousand and nine, Yahoo effectively threw in the towel on its own search tech, instead choosing to license Bing's engine in a ten year deal. If we take a long view of things, this likely precipitated the overall decline of the company, which went from being worth one hundred and twenty five billion dollars at the peak of the dot com boom to being sold to Verizon for four point eight billion dollars in twenty seventeen, which is roughly a three thousand square foot apartment in San Francisco. With Search no longer a priority in making less money for the company, Yahoo decided to pivot into Web two point zero and original content, making sum bats that paid off, but far far too many that did not. It spent one point one billion dollars on Tumblr in twenty thirteen, only for Verizon to sell it for just three million dollars in twenty nineteen. It put Zimbra in two thousand and seven ostensibly to complete with the new Google Apps productivity suite, only to sell it for a reported fraction of the original purchase price to VMware a few years later. That's not his fault, but nevertheless, Yahoo was a company without a mission, a purpose, or an objective. Nobody, and I'll speculate even though his leading the company really knew what it was and what it did. Anyway, just a big shout out right now to Kura Swisher, who referred to Pradaka as well respected. When he moved from Yahoo to Google. He absolutely nailed at Kara bang up job. In an interview with zd and ets Dan Farber from two thousand and five, Ragavan spoke of his intent to align the commercial incentives of a billion content providers with social good intent while at Yahoo, and his eagerness to inspire the audience to give more data.

What anyway before that, It's it's actually hard.

What anyway before that, It's it's actually hard.

To find out exactly what Ragava and did, though according to ZDNA, he spent fourteen years doing search and data mining research ibm MM. In April twenty eleven, The Guardian ran an interview with Ragavan that called him Yahoo's secret weapon, describing his plan to make rigorous scientific research and practice to inform Yahoo's business from email to advertising, and how under then CEO Carol Bart's the focus had shifted to the direct development of new products. It speaks of Ragavan's scientific approach and his steady process based logic to innovation that is very different to the common perception the ideas and development are more about luck and spontaneity. A sentence that I'm only reading to you because I really need you to hear how stupid it sounds and how specious some of the tech press.

To find out exactly what Ragava and did, though according to ZDNA, he spent fourteen years doing search and data mining research ibm MM. In April twenty eleven, The Guardian ran an interview with Ragavan that called him Yahoo's secret weapon, describing his plan to make rigorous scientific research and practice to inform Yahoo's business from email to advertising, and how under then CEO Carol Bart's the focus had shifted to the direct development of new products. It speaks of Ragavan's scientific approach and his steady process based logic to innovation that is very different to the common perception the ideas and development are more about luck and spontaneity. A sentence that I'm only reading to you because I really need you to hear how stupid it sounds and how specious some of the tech press.

Used to be.

Used to be.

Frankly, this entire article is ridiculous, so utterly vacuous, that I'm actually astonished I don't want to name the reporter.

Frankly, this entire article is ridiculous, so utterly vacuous, that I'm actually astonished I don't want to name the reporter.

I feel bad.

I feel bad.

What about Ragavan's career made this feel right? How has nobody connected these thoughts before? I have a day job, I run a PR firm, I am a blogger with a podcast, and I'm the one who said, yeah, okay, drag Uller is now the CEO of the Blood Bank. Nobody saw this. Nobody saw this at the time. I just feel a bit crazy. I feel a bit crazy. But to be clear, this was something written several years after Yahoo had licensed its search technology to Microsoft in a financial deal that the next CEO, Marissa Maya, who replaced Barts, was still angry about for years. Ragavan's reign as what zd Neat referred to as the search Master was one so successful that it ended up being replaced by a search engine that not a single person in the world enjoys saying out loud. The Guardian article ran exactly one year before dramatic layoffs at Yahoo that involved firing entire divisions worth of people, and four months before Carol Barts would be fired by telephone by then chairman Roy bost. Her replacement Scott Thompson, who previously served as president of PayPal. Would last a whole five months in the role before he was replaced by former Google executive Marissa Mayer, in part because it emerged he lied on his resume about having a computer science degree.

What about Ragavan's career made this feel right? How has nobody connected these thoughts before? I have a day job, I run a PR firm, I am a blogger with a podcast, and I'm the one who said, yeah, okay, drag Uller is now the CEO of the Blood Bank. Nobody saw this. Nobody saw this at the time. I just feel a bit crazy. I feel a bit crazy. But to be clear, this was something written several years after Yahoo had licensed its search technology to Microsoft in a financial deal that the next CEO, Marissa Maya, who replaced Barts, was still angry about for years. Ragavan's reign as what zd Neat referred to as the search Master was one so successful that it ended up being replaced by a search engine that not a single person in the world enjoys saying out loud. The Guardian article ran exactly one year before dramatic layoffs at Yahoo that involved firing entire divisions worth of people, and four months before Carol Barts would be fired by telephone by then chairman Roy bost. Her replacement Scott Thompson, who previously served as president of PayPal. Would last a whole five months in the role before he was replaced by former Google executive Marissa Mayer, in part because it emerged he lied on his resume about having a computer science degree.

Hey, Brobaka, did you not notice that anyway? Whatever?

Hey, Brobaka, did you not notice that anyway? Whatever?

Barts joined Yahoo in two thousand and nine, so about four years into Broba Kha's reign of terror, I guess, and she joined in the aftermath of its previous CEO, Jerry Yang, refusing to sell the company to Microsoft for forty five billion dollars. In her first year, she laid off hundreds of people and struck a deal that I've mentioned before to power Yahoo Search using Microsoft's being search engine Tech, with Microsoft paying Yahoo eighty eight percent of the revenue a game from searches. A deal made Yahoo a couple hundred million dollars for handing over the keys and the take to its most high traffic platform. As I previously stated, when Brabakhar Ragavan, Yahoo's secret weapon was doing his work, Yahoo Search was so valuable that it was replaced by Bing its sole value. In fact, I mean maybe I'm being a little unfair. There's a way of looking at this that you could say that Yahoo's entire value at the end of his career was driven by nostalgia and association with days before he worked there. Anyway, thanks to the state of modern search, it's actually very, very difficult to find much about Ragavan's history. It took me hours of digging through Google and at one point being embarrassingly to find three or four articles that went into any depth about him. But from what I've gleaned, his expertise lies primarily in failing upwards ascending through the ranks of technology on the momentum from the explosions he's coursed. In a wide interview from twenty twenty one, GLAD handler Stephen Levy said Ragavan isn't the CEO of Google, he just run the place, and described his addition to the company as a move from research to management. While Levy calls him a world class computer scientist who has authored definitive text in the field, which is true, he also describes Ragavan as choosing a management track, which definitely tracks with everything I found out about him. Ragavan proudly declares that Google's third party ad tech plays a critical role in keeping journalism alive, and a really shitty answer to a question that was also made at a time when he was in aggressively incentivizing search engine optimized content, and a year after he'd deposed someone who actually gave a shit about search. Under Ragavan, Google has become less reliable and it is dominated by search engine optimization and just outright spam. And I've said this before, but look, we complain about the state of Twitter under Elon Musk and justifiably he's a vile, anti, semi racist bigger. We all know this. It's fully true. We can say a million times. However, I'd argue that Ragavan, by extension some Ar Pashai deserve one hundred times more criticism. They've done unfathomable damage to society. You really can't fix the damage they've been doing and the damage they'll continue to do, especially as we go into an election. Ragavan and his cronies worked to oust Ben Gomes, a man who dedicated a good portion of his life to making the world's information more accessible, in the process burning the Library of Alexandria to the goddamn ground so that Sundar Pashai could make more than two hundred million dollars a year, and Ragavan a Manager High by Sundar Pashai, a former McKinzie man. The King of Managers is an example of everything wrong with the tech industry. Despite his history as a true computer scientist with actual academic credentials, Ragavan chose to bulldoze actual workers, people who did things, and people that care about technology and replace them with horrifying toadies that would make Google more profitable and less useful. Since Prabakar took the reins of Google in twenty twenty, Google search has dramatically declined with these core search updates I mentioned, allegedly made to improve the quality of results, having the adverse effect increasing the prevalence of spammy shitty search optimized content.

Barts joined Yahoo in two thousand and nine, so about four years into Broba Kha's reign of terror, I guess, and she joined in the aftermath of its previous CEO, Jerry Yang, refusing to sell the company to Microsoft for forty five billion dollars. In her first year, she laid off hundreds of people and struck a deal that I've mentioned before to power Yahoo Search using Microsoft's being search engine Tech, with Microsoft paying Yahoo eighty eight percent of the revenue a game from searches. A deal made Yahoo a couple hundred million dollars for handing over the keys and the take to its most high traffic platform. As I previously stated, when Brabakhar Ragavan, Yahoo's secret weapon was doing his work, Yahoo Search was so valuable that it was replaced by Bing its sole value. In fact, I mean maybe I'm being a little unfair. There's a way of looking at this that you could say that Yahoo's entire value at the end of his career was driven by nostalgia and association with days before he worked there. Anyway, thanks to the state of modern search, it's actually very, very difficult to find much about Ragavan's history. It took me hours of digging through Google and at one point being embarrassingly to find three or four articles that went into any depth about him. But from what I've gleaned, his expertise lies primarily in failing upwards ascending through the ranks of technology on the momentum from the explosions he's coursed. In a wide interview from twenty twenty one, GLAD handler Stephen Levy said Ragavan isn't the CEO of Google, he just run the place, and described his addition to the company as a move from research to management. While Levy calls him a world class computer scientist who has authored definitive text in the field, which is true, he also describes Ragavan as choosing a management track, which definitely tracks with everything I found out about him. Ragavan proudly declares that Google's third party ad tech plays a critical role in keeping journalism alive, and a really shitty answer to a question that was also made at a time when he was in aggressively incentivizing search engine optimized content, and a year after he'd deposed someone who actually gave a shit about search. Under Ragavan, Google has become less reliable and it is dominated by search engine optimization and just outright spam. And I've said this before, but look, we complain about the state of Twitter under Elon Musk and justifiably he's a vile, anti, semi racist bigger. We all know this. It's fully true. We can say a million times. However, I'd argue that Ragavan, by extension some Ar Pashai deserve one hundred times more criticism. They've done unfathomable damage to society. You really can't fix the damage they've been doing and the damage they'll continue to do, especially as we go into an election. Ragavan and his cronies worked to oust Ben Gomes, a man who dedicated a good portion of his life to making the world's information more accessible, in the process burning the Library of Alexandria to the goddamn ground so that Sundar Pashai could make more than two hundred million dollars a year, and Ragavan a Manager High by Sundar Pashai, a former McKinzie man. The King of Managers is an example of everything wrong with the tech industry. Despite his history as a true computer scientist with actual academic credentials, Ragavan chose to bulldoze actual workers, people who did things, and people that care about technology and replace them with horrifying toadies that would make Google more profitable and less useful. Since Prabakar took the reins of Google in twenty twenty, Google search has dramatically declined with these core search updates I mentioned, allegedly made to improve the quality of results, having the adverse effect increasing the prevalence of spammy shitty search optimized content.

It's frustrating. The anger you hear in my voice.

It's frustrating. The anger you hear in my voice.

The emotion is because I've read all of these antitrust emails. I have gone through this guy's history, and I've read all the things about Ben Gomes too. Every article about Ben Gomes where they interviewed, is this guy just having these dreamy thoughts about the future of information and the complexity of delivering it at high speed.

The emotion is because I've read all of these antitrust emails. I have gone through this guy's history, and I've read all the things about Ben Gomes too. Every article about Ben Gomes where they interviewed, is this guy just having these dreamy thoughts about the future of information and the complexity of delivering it at high speed.

Every interview with Ragavan.

Every interview with Ragavan.

Is some vague bullshit about how important data is it's so goddamn offensive to me. And all of this stuff happening is just one example of what I think are probably hundreds of things happening across startups or that have happened across startups in the last ten or fifteen years, and big tech two and it's because the people running the tech industry are no longer those who build Tim Larry Page and Sergey Brin left Google in December twenty nineteen, the same year, by the way as the Code Yellow thing, and while they remained as co controlling shareholders, they clearly don't give a shit about what Google means anymore. Propakar Ragavan is a manager, and his career, from what I can tell, is mostly made up of did some stuff at IBM, failed to make Yahoo anything of no, and fucked up Google so badly that every news outlet has run a story about how.

Is some vague bullshit about how important data is it's so goddamn offensive to me. And all of this stuff happening is just one example of what I think are probably hundreds of things happening across startups or that have happened across startups in the last ten or fifteen years, and big tech two and it's because the people running the tech industry are no longer those who build Tim Larry Page and Sergey Brin left Google in December twenty nineteen, the same year, by the way as the Code Yellow thing, and while they remained as co controlling shareholders, they clearly don't give a shit about what Google means anymore. Propakar Ragavan is a manager, and his career, from what I can tell, is mostly made up of did some stuff at IBM, failed to make Yahoo anything of no, and fucked up Google so badly that every news outlet has run a story about how.

Bad it is.

Bad it is.

This this is the result of taking technology out of the hands of real builders and handing it to managers at a time when management is synonymous with staying as far away from actual work as possible. When you're a do nothing looking to profit as much as possible, who doesn't use tech, who doesn't care about tech and you only care about growth.

This this is the result of taking technology out of the hands of real builders and handing it to managers at a time when management is synonymous with staying as far away from actual work as possible. When you're a do nothing looking to profit as much as possible, who doesn't use tech, who doesn't care about tech and you only care about growth.

Well, you're not a.

Well, you're not a.

User, You're a parasite. And it's these parasites that have dominated and are now draining the tech industry of its value. They're driving it into a goddamn ditch. Ragavan's story is unique in so far as the damage he's managed to inflict, or if we're being exceptionally charitable, failed to avoid in the case of Yahoo, on two industry defining companies, and the fact that he did it without being a CEO or founder is remarkable. Yeah, he's far from the only example of a manager falling upwards. I'm going to editorialize a bit here. I want to think about your job history. I want you to think about the managers you've had. I've written a lot about management, and specifically to do with remote work and the whole thing around guys who don't do work, who are barely in the office, telling you you need to be in the office. This problem is everywhere. Managers are everywhere, and managers aren't doing work. I'm sure someone will email me now and say, well, I'm a manager and off I'll do work all the time.

User, You're a parasite. And it's these parasites that have dominated and are now draining the tech industry of its value. They're driving it into a goddamn ditch. Ragavan's story is unique in so far as the damage he's managed to inflict, or if we're being exceptionally charitable, failed to avoid in the case of Yahoo, on two industry defining companies, and the fact that he did it without being a CEO or founder is remarkable. Yeah, he's far from the only example of a manager falling upwards. I'm going to editorialize a bit here. I want to think about your job history. I want you to think about the managers you've had. I've written a lot about management, and specifically to do with remote work and the whole thing around guys who don't do work, who are barely in the office, telling you you need to be in the office. This problem is everywhere. Managers are everywhere, and managers aren't doing work. I'm sure someone will email me now and say, well, I'm a manager and off I'll do work all the time.

Yeah, make sure you do.

Yeah, make sure you do.

That's why you're emailing me telling me how good you are at your job. People who actually do work don't feel defensive about it. People who do things then are part of the actual profit center. They don't need a podcast to tell them they're good at their job. What I think the problem is in modern American corporate society is that management is no longer synonymous with actually managing people. It's not about getting the people what they need. It's not about organizing things and making things efficient and good. It's not about execution. It's about handing work off to other people and getting paid handsomely. And if you disagree easy at better offline dot com, I will read your email, maybe I'll even respond. But the thing is management has become a poison in America. Managers have become poisonous because managers are not actually held to any kind of standard. No, only the workers who do the work are. What happened to Ben Gomes is one of the most disgusting, disgraceful things to happen in the tech industry. It's an absolute joke. Ben Gomes was a goddamn hero. And I really need you to read the news there and read these emails. I need you to see how many times him and Thakka Great Guy as well were saying, hey, growth is bad for search. The thing that Ben Gomes was being asked to do was increase queries on Google, the literal amount that people's search. There are many ways of looking at that and thinking, oh shit, that's not what you want. Surely you don't want no queries. You don't want people not using it at all, but queries going upwards. Lennearly suggests that if you're not magic, get to use the growth. At least the people are not getting what they want on the first try, which, by the way, kind of feels like how Google is nowadays when you go to Google and the first result and the second result, and the fifth result and the tenth result just don't get what you need because it's all that SEO crap. Now, this is all theorizing. But what I think prabagar Ragavan did was I think he took off all the fucking guidelines on Google Search. I think he rolled back changes specifically to make search, to increase queries, to give Google more chance to show you adverts. I am guessing don't have a source telling me this, but the pattern around the core search updates. The fact that Google Search started getting worse toward the middle and end of twenty nineteen and unquestionably dipped in twenty twenty. Well, that's when Prabakar took over, That's when the big man took the reins. That's when Drac Killer got his job at the blood bank. And this is the thing. There's very little that you and I can actually do about this. But what we can do is say names like Probagar Ragavan a great deal of times so that people like this can be known, so that the actions of these scurrilous assholes can be seen and heard and pointed at and spat upon. I'm not suggesting spitting on anyone, no violent acts. No can be pissy on the internet like the.

That's why you're emailing me telling me how good you are at your job. People who actually do work don't feel defensive about it. People who do things then are part of the actual profit center. They don't need a podcast to tell them they're good at their job. What I think the problem is in modern American corporate society is that management is no longer synonymous with actually managing people. It's not about getting the people what they need. It's not about organizing things and making things efficient and good. It's not about execution. It's about handing work off to other people and getting paid handsomely. And if you disagree easy at better offline dot com, I will read your email, maybe I'll even respond. But the thing is management has become a poison in America. Managers have become poisonous because managers are not actually held to any kind of standard. No, only the workers who do the work are. What happened to Ben Gomes is one of the most disgusting, disgraceful things to happen in the tech industry. It's an absolute joke. Ben Gomes was a goddamn hero. And I really need you to read the news there and read these emails. I need you to see how many times him and Thakka Great Guy as well were saying, hey, growth is bad for search. The thing that Ben Gomes was being asked to do was increase queries on Google, the literal amount that people's search. There are many ways of looking at that and thinking, oh shit, that's not what you want. Surely you don't want no queries. You don't want people not using it at all, but queries going upwards. Lennearly suggests that if you're not magic, get to use the growth. At least the people are not getting what they want on the first try, which, by the way, kind of feels like how Google is nowadays when you go to Google and the first result and the second result, and the fifth result and the tenth result just don't get what you need because it's all that SEO crap. Now, this is all theorizing. But what I think prabagar Ragavan did was I think he took off all the fucking guidelines on Google Search. I think he rolled back changes specifically to make search, to increase queries, to give Google more chance to show you adverts. I am guessing don't have a source telling me this, but the pattern around the core search updates. The fact that Google Search started getting worse toward the middle and end of twenty nineteen and unquestionably dipped in twenty twenty. Well, that's when Prabakar took over, That's when the big man took the reins. That's when Drac Killer got his job at the blood bank. And this is the thing. There's very little that you and I can actually do about this. But what we can do is say names like Probagar Ragavan a great deal of times so that people like this can be known, so that the actions of these scurrilous assholes can be seen and heard and pointed at and spat upon. I'm not suggesting spitting on anyone, no violent acts. No can be pissy on the internet like the.

Rest of us. Now I'm ranting. I realize i'm ranting, but this subject, really, it really got to me. But it's not the only one.

Rest of us. Now I'm ranting. I realize i'm ranting, but this subject, really, it really got to me. But it's not the only one.

In the next episode, I'm going to conclude this sordid three part fiasco with a few more examples. And how many of these managers, these bean counters, devoid of imagination or ability or anything of note save for that utter slug likability. To protect oneself, I want to talk about how these people manage to obfiscate their true intentions by pretending to be engineers, by pretending to be technologists, and pretending.

In the next episode, I'm going to conclude this sordid three part fiasco with a few more examples. And how many of these managers, these bean counters, devoid of imagination or ability or anything of note save for that utter slug likability. To protect oneself, I want to talk about how these people manage to obfiscate their true intentions by pretending to be engineers, by pretending to be technologists, and pretending.

To be innovators.

To be innovators.

I want to tell you all about how Adam Masseri destroyed Instagram, and I want to tell you how little Sam Altman has achieved other than making him and his friends rich. See you next time. Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matasowski. You can check out more of his music and audio projects at Matasowski dot com, M A T T O S O W s ki dot com. You can email me at easy at better offline dot com, or check out better Offline dot com to find my newsletter and more links to this podcast. Thank you so much for listening.

I want to tell you all about how Adam Masseri destroyed Instagram, and I want to tell you how little Sam Altman has achieved other than making him and his friends rich. See you next time. Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matasowski. You can check out more of his music and audio projects at Matasowski dot com, M A T T O S O W s ki dot com. You can email me at easy at better offline dot com, or check out better Offline dot com to find my newsletter and more links to this podcast. Thank you so much for listening.

Better Offline is a production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool

Better Offline is a production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool

Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.