18 ms·

My favorite doc so far: https://web.archive.org/web/20230919185431/https://www.justice.gov/d9/2023-09/416421.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20230919185431/http

My favorite doc so far: https://web.archive.org/web/20230919185431/https://www.justice.gov/d9/2023-09/416421.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20230919185431/https://www.justi...

elteto 3y ago
“I don’t want the message to be we are doing this because the ads team needs more revenue” …but then that is exactly why they are doing it. Sales team needs to reach their bonus quota! They can’t be demoralized! This is a rare glimpse at the enshitification process _actually_ happening. I can almost read the above in David Attenborough’s voice. Feels like a documentary.
- bitwize 3y ago
  "Here we observe the marketroid in its natural habitat. Note the ruthless, predatory behavior..."
  - klabb3 3y ago
    “…counting their beans, realizing it’s not enough to last through the winter of Q1”
- BlackNitrogen 3y ago
  That's just such an example of how it works. "Our employees are in high cost of living areas, missing earnings will be demoralizing". If you worked in a large corp for a while, you notice this happening. Everyone is incentivized to hit short term goals.
  - einpoklum 3y ago
    These days, I work for (some part of) a large corporation. In my anecdotal experience, the people who get upset about missing earnings are managers, not regular employees nor even tech leads. And even that is at the annual level or longer-term; quarterly results are considered quite ephemeral.
    - ethanbond 3y ago
      Regular employees definitely notice when they don’t get raises or bonuses. Whether they draw the line to quarterly results…
      - lazide 3y ago
        Usually corporate is more than happy to draw the connection, hah.
      - einpoklum 3y ago
        1. "noticing" and "caring" is not the same thing. They notice it like they notice the rain. 2. Our (*) raises are only very partially affected by company results, and probably not by the quarterly ones. 3. Our bonuses are affected by annual results, nor quarterly ones. Also, they're not so large as to corrupt professional-ethical motivation ("if we cripple the product then the company would make money and we'd get a larger bonus"). AFAICT of course, I'm not a mind reader and only know a small part of the thousands and thousands of employees. 4. There are no result targets with some kind of discontinuous effect on bonuses and raises. At least not that employees know about. Of course, this could be very different at Google. ----------- (*) - I actually work for a subcontractor so I should probably not even use the first person plural, but let's not complicate the anecdote even further.
        yunwal 3y ago
        At google, a substantial amount of employee comp is in equity so any drop in share price would lower morale.
  - zeruch 3y ago
    This is basically the entire industry now. Even firms that aren't public operate as if they are.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  > This is a rare glimpse at the enshitification process _actually_ happening. Love this. For some reason I thought of those science experiments along the lines of "Our super powerful microscopes and cameras can now record chemical reactions in real time!" This is a case of "Yes, right there! 'If we don't make this shitty change we all miss our bonus' is exactly how enshittification happens!".
- rdtsc 3y ago
  > “I don’t want the message to be we are doing this because the ads team needs more revenue” That's pure gold. When people start with "I don't want to / I am not ..." and then proceed to say or do exactly that. - "I don't want to be the asshole here" /proceeds to be an asshole. - "To be perfectly honest" /starts making stuff up Jerry is really pushing there and the goal is clear: "Long-term: It feels like through some deliberate efforts we can actually use entry points like Chrome to drive query growth... we should explore this aggressively." None of this is surprising but it's interesting to have it right from the horses' mouths, so to speak.
  - FireBeyond 3y ago
    Well, to be "fair", he never said he wanted to not do it... They just don't want that to be the message that accompanies it.
    - saghm 3y ago
      Yeah, this is the key insight IMO; the implication is that everyone knows that's the real reason, and the only question is whether to be honest or not.
  - solardev 3y ago
    Translation: You need to do this so we get paid. Same team, right? But don't make us look bad. Spin it so we don't get the blame.
- cj 3y ago
  This is a great example of corporate politics. Author clearly states in the email that the he’s not saying X. But every single word around “I’m not saying X” is clearly saying X.
- 60secs 3y ago
  I want to hear Attenborough annotate Jerry's morning today.
- jeroenhd 3y ago
  "I don’t want the message to be" is like the corporate version of "I'm not racist, but". You don't say "I'm not racist, but this cheese tastes really good" just like you don't say "I don't want the message to be that we like hugging puppies". These words in any corporate environment are always a sign that someone knows that what they're doing is ethically wrong or will at the very least piss off customers.
eviks 3y ago
The don't have searchable/indexed docs, right, only images?
oneepic 3y ago
One offtopic comment from me, sorry-- I took one look at the page, it said "pdf" with an open button, and I hit the back button... Am I the only paranoid one??
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- hadrien01 3y ago
  That's because your browser doesn't have a PDF reader.
jedberg 3y ago
It's funny I was just talking about this yesterday. By tying compensation so tightly to stock price, it incentivizes everyone to do what's best for the stock price, not what's best for the customer. This email is the perfect example of that.
- delfinom 3y ago
  That's the majority of US run companies these days. If it isn't employees with stock grants, the executives themselves have performance bonuses. So doing every long term business killing thing for short term personal profit is status quo.
- prox 3y ago
  It also incentives short-term thinking and results. Some managers will burn whole departments just to hit a target and then leave after they got their bonus and the company goes down.
  - tempodox 3y ago
    Maybe companies that let themselves be controlled by such forces deserve to go down.
    - arebop 3y ago
      The problem is that ~all companies let themselves be controlled by such forces. Given there are so few counter examples it looks like it is a systemic issue and not a choice each board makes independently. Google's unusual share class structure was supposed to give them a degree of independence from these forces, but it didn't last. They still tie employee comp to share prices, so they still have to care about share prices. Facebook has even stronger centralization of shareholder power, but its pay structure is very similar. Can you think of any example of a public company that is resisting these forces?
      - dahfizz 3y ago
        Apple comes to mind as a company with some degree of long term vision and strong leadership. They are meticulous about maintaining their brand, and so far have resisted the enshitification. They also have more cash than they know how to spend. So maybe the pressure to increase revenue this quarter is just lower in general.
nonameiguess 3y ago
Damn. Am I reading this correctly? Jerry here is asking Anil to make search results shittier on purpose so users will have to make more queries so ads get more impressions? All because they decided to tie employee compensation to the whims of quarterly earnings reports. I at least understand why on that last piece, given any attempt at quantitatively estimating long-term value creation at the time of creation is effectively impossible. Still interesting to see the tail so explicitly wagging the dog, though, with a manager all but saying fuck the users, our salespeople need their bonuses. I'm not claiming I know an answer here, given Amazon's attempt at the opposite fuck employees, do everything possible to please customers hasn't really worked out, either. If the FTC and US court system have any backbone, I guess hopefully the answer is stop letting single companies get this powerful. The market can only help if there's actually a market. And I guess quit it with the mandatory return-to-office policies so your employees don't have to live in high cost of living areas and maybe missing a quarter or two's targets and having to take home 600k instead of 800k one year won't be life-destroying.
- supriyo-biswas 3y ago
  If I am reading this document correctly, the changes consists of rolling out new features such as mapping search terms to entities. While I understand the frustrations people have with Google search, these changes in itself don't seem that bad, although I do agree that pursuing revenue as your sole purpose definitely can lead you astray.
  - marcinzm 3y ago
    It's the philosophy behind them. Let's say Google Search improved relevance by showing less low quality sites. However what if those sites also showed a lot of Google Display Ads and thus generated a lot of ad revenue for Google versus other sites. Given this email it's very possible that such a change would get rolled back or discouraged due to the drop on Google revenue from it.
    - jsnell 3y ago
      If there had been such a change or a discussion about whether to make such a change, presumably that'd be what the DoJ would have used as evidence instead of this.
supriyo-biswas 3y ago
Would you mind posting the source which has the list of all the documents?
- TradingPlaces 3y ago
  Sorry, this was a doc that came up in Jerry’s testimony before they pulled everything down. I happened to still have the tab open and found it on archive.org
  - EMCymatics 3y ago
    You're a hero we needed
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- andelink 3y ago
  https://www.justice.gov/atr/us-and-plaintiff-states-v-google-llc-2020-trial-exhibits https://www.justice.gov/atr/us-and-plaintiff-states-v-google...
Gibbon1 3y ago
It's hard to read that without thinking about weaving a giant wicker man over the deary winter days.
aragonite 3y ago
If they are going to redact all the percentage figures by covering them with a box they should at least use a monospace font or something.
jhp123 3y ago
I'll summarize this for people who don't want to read through the PDF, or aren't familiar with the jargon. It's a discussion between two people, Jerry and Anil. Anil seems to be representing the Chrome team, and Jerry the Ads team and/or sales. 7 months prior, some feature related to Chrome's omnibox (url/search box) was rolled out, leading to reduced searches ("SQV"). Jerry is asking for this feature to be rolled back (undone) to restore lost revenue. Anil is trying to keep the feature by finding other ways to make up the lost revenue. Anil is opposed to rolling back the feature because it is a user-visible change that was approved by all parties and launched months ago, so it will be frustrating to users to lose the feature and to developers to see their work canned. Anil accelerates the launch of some other features to improve revenue, but Jerry is not satisfied. After some back and forth he sends the final email laying out his case: the revenue impact is too severe, sales is going to miss quota, quarterly earnings will be below forecast, stock price will decline, employees will lose out on stock-based compensation. This last email is cc'ed widely so I think Jerry was trying to build more pressure on Anil/Chrome team. edit: do read the pdf though, there's a lot more detail in it.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  Wow, thanks very much for this explanation - I really appreciated it giving me full context before reading the email exchange. It's hard for me to imagine better evidence that Google needs to be broken up than this. Honestly, I think it should basically be forbidden for Ads folks to even talk to the Chrome team. This looks like textbook abuse of monopoly power when you use your dominant position in one area (web browsing) to juice your position in another area (ads). Also, I think it shows the foolishness of any company thinking that "Don't be evil" is a position that can last over time as you grow. I know it's easy to look at Jerry as "the bad guy" in this situation, but he is simply reacting to his incentives ("if we don't make these changes, we miss our sales number, and if we miss our sales numbers, we don't get our bonus"). All big companies eventually revert to their incentive structure once they become big enough. This line of thinking also goes to show why Google has traveled down the enshittification path so strongly over the past 5-10 years. Easy for to me imagine how each little search result change resulted in more revenue and not a significant number of people leaving, until you are left with the situation we have now where the entire first page of any remotely commercial search is just ads, going directly against Google's entire original thesis for their existence in the first place. My guess is the relatively recent change of text from "Ad" to "Sponsored" is because fewer people realize that sponsored means ad.
eqvinox 3y ago
> "But given this has been live for 7 months and is very usable[sic] visible (see this reddit[link] thread where users in our ablation experiment noticed and called it a bug!)" The reddit link & comment is just... chef's kiss
- Fluorescence 3y ago
  > ablation experiment What is that? "Ablation" as in removal? Do they AB test removing new features just for data? ... and also monitor SM threads for feedback?
  - hyeonwho22 3y ago
    In AI research ablation experiments are comparative tests, but in one branch some feature is removed. Here the Chrome team is saying that removal of the feature (which the Ads team wanted) was instantly noticed by users.
  - Atsuii 3y ago
    Yes ablation as in removal. They then refer to using the 3% experiment to estimate out revenue loss, so it appears they were running an AB test where it was removed for 3% of users so they could understand the metric impact of removal. Part of being a decent PM is monitoring SM for any feature talk.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- harrulous 3y ago
  I did some sleuthing, and I found a notable amount of complaints about a "bug" around this time (mid March 2019), after Chrome update 73.0.3683.75 went live. Some examples: [1][2][3] More specifically, starting 14 March, many users noted that the latest Chrome update removed almost everything from the New Tab page (including shortcuts, themes, settings button), leaving a single prominent Google search bar — nothing else! This looks like it was intended to increase the use of the search bar, thus increasing SQV. By prominently displaying it as the only option when using New Tab whilst removing shortcuts, users accessing frequently used sites could only do so via search. I'm not sure if this is exactly Ablation Experiment #7 that Anil was resisting to rollback, but it appears seemingly related to the general ablation experiments performed during this time to increase SQV. Given Jerry eventually suggested a "scrappy tactical" compromise, i.e. "increasing vertical space between the search box/icons/feed on the new tab to make search more prominent", the March "bug" definitely seems to be related to these emails. It is absolutely crazy to see tangible evidence of the pressure from the Ads(?) Team forcing the Chrome team to ablate/degrade functionality for their users. [1] https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/2403795?msgid=2404523 https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/2403795?msgid=24045... [2] https://old.reddit.com/r/chrome/comments/b0ynkq/missing_2_shortcuts_on_new_tab/eii9ccx/ https://old.reddit.com/r/chrome/comments/b0ynkq/missing_2_sh... [3] https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=941631 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=941631
ycombinatornews 3y ago
“…and this is why I did not push harder…” This is a full-on circus. Bonuses and stock drop and revenue plus solving a problem for team Sales using team Chrome is just pathetic. It could be easy to assume this happens across all Google products.
- jakevoytko 3y ago
  Absolutely. The entirety of Google’s consumer footprint was leveraged to try to make Google Plus a success. And that was just the first example I saw when I joined.
  - birken 3y ago
    And how did that go?
  - sexy_seedbox 3y ago
    Do tell us about the other examples.
technick 3y ago
That's all I needed to see before making up my mind, Google needs to be broken up, or alphabet or whatever they're calling themselves these days. Advertising needs to become a separate company, not managed by anyone with controlling stakes in google and visa versa.
- hyeonwho22 3y ago
  I think advertising needs to be broken into several competing companies. Otherwise it is just spinning off the most profitable part of the company as its own standalone monopoly, and leaving the services users find useful as businesses without revenue streams.
  - m463 3y ago
    I think advertising needs to be separated from data collection and other assaults on privacy.
  - lazide 3y ago
    Facebook/Meta is a very large advertising company. And it isn’t the only one.
noddingham 3y ago
Must be great to get a PhD in CS and get hired by the Search team these days. I hope the high pay is worth it.
badrequest 3y ago
"I care more about revenue than most people" is a very nice way to phrase "I don't give a rat's ass about the user, I want my money!"
- EMCymatics 3y ago
  Not really his money if those numbers are not accurate you know
  - hyperhopper 3y ago
    He wants more money to be his. That's the point.
    - EMCymatics 3y ago
      Hope it's not by fraud.
choppaface 3y ago
If a Google exec is dumb enough to put this diatribe in an email instead of a call, just think what they do with your data / browsing history.
havnagiggle 3y ago
Looks like Jerry is a called upon witness the first week of October if my understanding of the docs is correct.
- TradingPlaces 3y ago
  He was already on the stand last week. This doc was part of that, which is how it first came to my attention https://archive.ph/lGLXR https://archive.ph/lGLXR
pests 3y ago
> "Then from this menu we can pick the ones that add up to the target result with the lowest negative impact." I do like how they care about reducing impact to themselves but it is funny that it msut happen because targets must be met.
pests 3y ago
What do they mean by the word ablation throughout the document?

My favorite doc so far: https://web.archive.org/web/20230919185431/https://www.justice.gov/d9/2023-09/416421.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20230919185431/https://www.justi...

elteto 3y ago

“I don’t want the message to be we are doing this because the ads team needs more revenue” …but then that is exactly why they are doing it. Sales team needs to reach their bonus quota! They can’t be demoralized! This is a rare glimpse at the enshitification process _actually_ happening. I can almost read the above in David Attenborough’s voice. Feels like a documentary.

bitwize 3y ago
"Here we observe the marketroid in its natural habitat. Note the ruthless, predatory behavior..."
- klabb3 3y ago
  “…counting their beans, realizing it’s not enough to last through the winter of Q1”
BlackNitrogen 3y ago
That's just such an example of how it works. "Our employees are in high cost of living areas, missing earnings will be demoralizing". If you worked in a large corp for a while, you notice this happening. Everyone is incentivized to hit short term goals.
- einpoklum 3y ago
  These days, I work for (some part of) a large corporation. In my anecdotal experience, the people who get upset about missing earnings are managers, not regular employees nor even tech leads. And even that is at the annual level or longer-term; quarterly results are considered quite ephemeral.
  - ethanbond 3y ago
    Regular employees definitely notice when they don’t get raises or bonuses. Whether they draw the line to quarterly results…
    - lazide 3y ago
      Usually corporate is more than happy to draw the connection, hah.
    - einpoklum 3y ago
      1. "noticing" and "caring" is not the same thing. They notice it like they notice the rain. 2. Our (*) raises are only very partially affected by company results, and probably not by the quarterly ones. 3. Our bonuses are affected by annual results, nor quarterly ones. Also, they're not so large as to corrupt professional-ethical motivation ("if we cripple the product then the company would make money and we'd get a larger bonus"). AFAICT of course, I'm not a mind reader and only know a small part of the thousands and thousands of employees. 4. There are no result targets with some kind of discontinuous effect on bonuses and raises. At least not that employees know about. Of course, this could be very different at Google. ----------- (*) - I actually work for a subcontractor so I should probably not even use the first person plural, but let's not complicate the anecdote even further.
      - yunwal 3y ago
        At google, a substantial amount of employee comp is in equity so any drop in share price would lower morale.
- zeruch 3y ago
  This is basically the entire industry now. Even firms that aren't public operate as if they are.
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
> This is a rare glimpse at the enshitification process _actually_ happening. Love this. For some reason I thought of those science experiments along the lines of "Our super powerful microscopes and cameras can now record chemical reactions in real time!" This is a case of "Yes, right there! 'If we don't make this shitty change we all miss our bonus' is exactly how enshittification happens!".
rdtsc 3y ago
> “I don’t want the message to be we are doing this because the ads team needs more revenue” That's pure gold. When people start with "I don't want to / I am not ..." and then proceed to say or do exactly that. - "I don't want to be the asshole here" /proceeds to be an asshole. - "To be perfectly honest" /starts making stuff up Jerry is really pushing there and the goal is clear: "Long-term: It feels like through some deliberate efforts we can actually use entry points like Chrome to drive query growth... we should explore this aggressively." None of this is surprising but it's interesting to have it right from the horses' mouths, so to speak.
- FireBeyond 3y ago
  Well, to be "fair", he never said he wanted to not do it... They just don't want that to be the message that accompanies it.
  - saghm 3y ago
    Yeah, this is the key insight IMO; the implication is that everyone knows that's the real reason, and the only question is whether to be honest or not.
- solardev 3y ago
  Translation: You need to do this so we get paid. Same team, right? But don't make us look bad. Spin it so we don't get the blame.
cj 3y ago
This is a great example of corporate politics. Author clearly states in the email that the he’s not saying X. But every single word around “I’m not saying X” is clearly saying X.
60secs 3y ago
I want to hear Attenborough annotate Jerry's morning today.
jeroenhd 3y ago
"I don’t want the message to be" is like the corporate version of "I'm not racist, but". You don't say "I'm not racist, but this cheese tastes really good" just like you don't say "I don't want the message to be that we like hugging puppies". These words in any corporate environment are always a sign that someone knows that what they're doing is ethically wrong or will at the very least piss off customers.

eviks 3y ago

The don't have searchable/indexed docs, right, only images?

oneepic 3y ago

One offtopic comment from me, sorry-- I took one look at the page, it said "pdf" with an open button, and I hit the back button... Am I the only paranoid one??

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
hadrien01 3y ago
That's because your browser doesn't have a PDF reader.

jedberg 3y ago

It's funny I was just talking about this yesterday. By tying compensation so tightly to stock price, it incentivizes everyone to do what's best for the stock price, not what's best for the customer. This email is the perfect example of that.

delfinom 3y ago
That's the majority of US run companies these days. If it isn't employees with stock grants, the executives themselves have performance bonuses. So doing every long term business killing thing for short term personal profit is status quo.
prox 3y ago
It also incentives short-term thinking and results. Some managers will burn whole departments just to hit a target and then leave after they got their bonus and the company goes down.
- tempodox 3y ago
  Maybe companies that let themselves be controlled by such forces deserve to go down.
  - arebop 3y ago
    The problem is that ~all companies let themselves be controlled by such forces. Given there are so few counter examples it looks like it is a systemic issue and not a choice each board makes independently. Google's unusual share class structure was supposed to give them a degree of independence from these forces, but it didn't last. They still tie employee comp to share prices, so they still have to care about share prices. Facebook has even stronger centralization of shareholder power, but its pay structure is very similar. Can you think of any example of a public company that is resisting these forces?
    - dahfizz 3y ago
      Apple comes to mind as a company with some degree of long term vision and strong leadership. They are meticulous about maintaining their brand, and so far have resisted the enshitification. They also have more cash than they know how to spend. So maybe the pressure to increase revenue this quarter is just lower in general.

nonameiguess 3y ago

Damn. Am I reading this correctly? Jerry here is asking Anil to make search results shittier on purpose so users will have to make more queries so ads get more impressions? All because they decided to tie employee compensation to the whims of quarterly earnings reports. I at least understand why on that last piece, given any attempt at quantitatively estimating long-term value creation at the time of creation is effectively impossible. Still interesting to see the tail so explicitly wagging the dog, though, with a manager all but saying fuck the users, our salespeople need their bonuses. I'm not claiming I know an answer here, given Amazon's attempt at the opposite fuck employees, do everything possible to please customers hasn't really worked out, either. If the FTC and US court system have any backbone, I guess hopefully the answer is stop letting single companies get this powerful. The market can only help if there's actually a market. And I guess quit it with the mandatory return-to-office policies so your employees don't have to live in high cost of living areas and maybe missing a quarter or two's targets and having to take home 600k instead of 800k one year won't be life-destroying.

supriyo-biswas 3y ago
If I am reading this document correctly, the changes consists of rolling out new features such as mapping search terms to entities. While I understand the frustrations people have with Google search, these changes in itself don't seem that bad, although I do agree that pursuing revenue as your sole purpose definitely can lead you astray.
- marcinzm 3y ago
  It's the philosophy behind them. Let's say Google Search improved relevance by showing less low quality sites. However what if those sites also showed a lot of Google Display Ads and thus generated a lot of ad revenue for Google versus other sites. Given this email it's very possible that such a change would get rolled back or discouraged due to the drop on Google revenue from it.
  - jsnell 3y ago
    If there had been such a change or a discussion about whether to make such a change, presumably that'd be what the DoJ would have used as evidence instead of this.

supriyo-biswas 3y ago

Would you mind posting the source which has the list of all the documents?

TradingPlaces 3y ago
Sorry, this was a doc that came up in Jerry’s testimony before they pulled everything down. I happened to still have the tab open and found it on archive.org
- EMCymatics 3y ago
  You're a hero we needed
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
andelink 3y ago
https://www.justice.gov/atr/us-and-plaintiff-states-v-google-llc-2020-trial-exhibits https://www.justice.gov/atr/us-and-plaintiff-states-v-google...

Gibbon1 3y ago

It's hard to read that without thinking about weaving a giant wicker man over the deary winter days.

aragonite 3y ago

If they are going to redact all the percentage figures by covering them with a box they should at least use a monospace font or something.

jhp123 3y ago

I'll summarize this for people who don't want to read through the PDF, or aren't familiar with the jargon. It's a discussion between two people, Jerry and Anil. Anil seems to be representing the Chrome team, and Jerry the Ads team and/or sales. 7 months prior, some feature related to Chrome's omnibox (url/search box) was rolled out, leading to reduced searches ("SQV"). Jerry is asking for this feature to be rolled back (undone) to restore lost revenue. Anil is trying to keep the feature by finding other ways to make up the lost revenue. Anil is opposed to rolling back the feature because it is a user-visible change that was approved by all parties and launched months ago, so it will be frustrating to users to lose the feature and to developers to see their work canned. Anil accelerates the launch of some other features to improve revenue, but Jerry is not satisfied. After some back and forth he sends the final email laying out his case: the revenue impact is too severe, sales is going to miss quota, quarterly earnings will be below forecast, stock price will decline, employees will lose out on stock-based compensation. This last email is cc'ed widely so I think Jerry was trying to build more pressure on Anil/Chrome team. edit: do read the pdf though, there's a lot more detail in it.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
Wow, thanks very much for this explanation - I really appreciated it giving me full context before reading the email exchange. It's hard for me to imagine better evidence that Google needs to be broken up than this. Honestly, I think it should basically be forbidden for Ads folks to even talk to the Chrome team. This looks like textbook abuse of monopoly power when you use your dominant position in one area (web browsing) to juice your position in another area (ads). Also, I think it shows the foolishness of any company thinking that "Don't be evil" is a position that can last over time as you grow. I know it's easy to look at Jerry as "the bad guy" in this situation, but he is simply reacting to his incentives ("if we don't make these changes, we miss our sales number, and if we miss our sales numbers, we don't get our bonus"). All big companies eventually revert to their incentive structure once they become big enough. This line of thinking also goes to show why Google has traveled down the enshittification path so strongly over the past 5-10 years. Easy for to me imagine how each little search result change resulted in more revenue and not a significant number of people leaving, until you are left with the situation we have now where the entire first page of any remotely commercial search is just ads, going directly against Google's entire original thesis for their existence in the first place. My guess is the relatively recent change of text from "Ad" to "Sponsored" is because fewer people realize that sponsored means ad.

eqvinox 3y ago

> "But given this has been live for 7 months and is very usable[sic] visible (see this reddit[link] thread where users in our ablation experiment noticed and called it a bug!)" The reddit link & comment is just... chef's kiss

Fluorescence 3y ago
> ablation experiment What is that? "Ablation" as in removal? Do they AB test removing new features just for data? ... and also monitor SM threads for feedback?
- hyeonwho22 3y ago
  In AI research ablation experiments are comparative tests, but in one branch some feature is removed. Here the Chrome team is saying that removal of the feature (which the Ads team wanted) was instantly noticed by users.
- Atsuii 3y ago
  Yes ablation as in removal. They then refer to using the 3% experiment to estimate out revenue loss, so it appears they were running an AB test where it was removed for 3% of users so they could understand the metric impact of removal. Part of being a decent PM is monitoring SM for any feature talk.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
harrulous 3y ago
I did some sleuthing, and I found a notable amount of complaints about a "bug" around this time (mid March 2019), after Chrome update 73.0.3683.75 went live. Some examples: [1][2][3] More specifically, starting 14 March, many users noted that the latest Chrome update removed almost everything from the New Tab page (including shortcuts, themes, settings button), leaving a single prominent Google search bar — nothing else! This looks like it was intended to increase the use of the search bar, thus increasing SQV. By prominently displaying it as the only option when using New Tab whilst removing shortcuts, users accessing frequently used sites could only do so via search. I'm not sure if this is exactly Ablation Experiment #7 that Anil was resisting to rollback, but it appears seemingly related to the general ablation experiments performed during this time to increase SQV. Given Jerry eventually suggested a "scrappy tactical" compromise, i.e. "increasing vertical space between the search box/icons/feed on the new tab to make search more prominent", the March "bug" definitely seems to be related to these emails. It is absolutely crazy to see tangible evidence of the pressure from the Ads(?) Team forcing the Chrome team to ablate/degrade functionality for their users. [1] https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/2403795?msgid=2404523 https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/2403795?msgid=24045... [2] https://old.reddit.com/r/chrome/comments/b0ynkq/missing_2_shortcuts_on_new_tab/eii9ccx/ https://old.reddit.com/r/chrome/comments/b0ynkq/missing_2_sh... [3] https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=941631 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=941631

ycombinatornews 3y ago

“…and this is why I did not push harder…” This is a full-on circus. Bonuses and stock drop and revenue plus solving a problem for team Sales using team Chrome is just pathetic. It could be easy to assume this happens across all Google products.

jakevoytko 3y ago
Absolutely. The entirety of Google’s consumer footprint was leveraged to try to make Google Plus a success. And that was just the first example I saw when I joined.
- birken 3y ago
  And how did that go?
- sexy_seedbox 3y ago
  Do tell us about the other examples.

technick 3y ago

That's all I needed to see before making up my mind, Google needs to be broken up, or alphabet or whatever they're calling themselves these days. Advertising needs to become a separate company, not managed by anyone with controlling stakes in google and visa versa.

hyeonwho22 3y ago
I think advertising needs to be broken into several competing companies. Otherwise it is just spinning off the most profitable part of the company as its own standalone monopoly, and leaving the services users find useful as businesses without revenue streams.
- m463 3y ago
  I think advertising needs to be separated from data collection and other assaults on privacy.
- lazide 3y ago
  Facebook/Meta is a very large advertising company. And it isn’t the only one.

noddingham 3y ago

Must be great to get a PhD in CS and get hired by the Search team these days. I hope the high pay is worth it.

badrequest 3y ago

"I care more about revenue than most people" is a very nice way to phrase "I don't give a rat's ass about the user, I want my money!"

EMCymatics 3y ago
Not really his money if those numbers are not accurate you know
- hyperhopper 3y ago
  He wants more money to be his. That's the point.
  - EMCymatics 3y ago
    Hope it's not by fraud.

choppaface 3y ago

If a Google exec is dumb enough to put this diatribe in an email instead of a call, just think what they do with your data / browsing history.

havnagiggle 3y ago

Looks like Jerry is a called upon witness the first week of October if my understanding of the docs is correct.

TradingPlaces 3y ago
He was already on the stand last week. This doc was part of that, which is how it first came to my attention https://archive.ph/lGLXR https://archive.ph/lGLXR

pests 3y ago

> "Then from this menu we can pick the ones that add up to the target result with the lowest negative impact." I do like how they care about reducing impact to themselves but it is funny that it msut happen because targets must be met.

pests 3y ago

What do they mean by the word ablation throughout the document?