this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2026
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[–] Cris_Citrus@piefed.zip 4 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (2 children)

That was sundar pichai? Or someone else? Do you know what terms I'd need to look up to find sources for that? Thats information I'd absolutely like to include when talking about this with people, thank you for filling me in, I had no idea about that and it adds a lot of substance to that point


Edit: from the provided link the person who killed google search was Prabhakar Raghavan, who was apparently responsible for yahoo search over the period in which it fell precipitously off a cliff. He was put in that role by sundar pichai, replacing someone who explicitly cared about search and was deeply important to search development and had been there since the beginning

Do you want to know what Prabhakar Raghavan’s old job was? What Prabhakar Raghavan, the new head of Google Search, the guy that has run Google Search into the ground, the guy who is currently destroying search, did before his job at Google?

He was the head of search for Yahoo from 2005 through 2012 — a tumultuous period that cemented its terminal decline, and effectively saw the company bow out of the search market altogether. His responsibilities? Research and development for Yahoo's search and ads products

So not Sundar pichai, but the article does explain that he was specifically picked to become the new head of search by sundar pichai, and that Sundar used to work for McKinsey Consulting, who were responsible for the business strategy that fueled the opioid crisis, among lots of other things. Super dense, but well worth the read!

[–] megopie@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 2 hours ago

i looked up the story I had read a while back, and sundar was not the head of ads, but had just become the ceo after having been on the board of directors, and the issue was kicked up to him when Ben Gomes refused implement changes that Prabhakar Raghavan of ads wanted. later Gomes left the company and was replaced by Raghavan as head of search.

This all coming from internal emails and memos that were released as part of the anti trust case summarized in this piece which does a very good job of sourcing individual claims by pointing to specific emails and memos, although, the author is very… passionate in their coverage.

[–] demonsword@lemmy.world 0 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Thats information I’d absolutely like to include when talking about this with people

Here you go

[–] Cris_Citrus@piefed.zip 2 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

Thank you so much!! There were some details I wanted to clarify for people after reading so I edited my previous reply so folks can see a summary of some of the relevant points

I appreciate you getting me a link! This will be very helpful in explaining some of the rot in the search experience and adds a lot of additional weight to my suspicion that making search worse may also be happening to push ai adoption