The Core

Well that was scathing.

I wonder if becoming a symbol of the Rot Economy / Enshitocene has set off a yellow alert at Google like it did in 2010

Matt Cutts defense of Farmer (which I thought was a huge improvement) at Pubcon started with a series of screen shots of headlines saying Google has become a games cesspool. We’re there again.

I think they have two problems though.

1. It will cost short-term revenue

2. They may no longer have the ability to roll out something like Farmer/Penguin that has a noticeable impact on search quality.

BoL - what do you think of #2? Has search quality just become too hard or does Google simply not care?

[fix autocorrect]

Yeah, he didn't hold back.

Quite some turn of phrase...

>And when finally given the keys to the kingdom — the ability to elevate Google Search even further — he was ratfucked by a series of rotten careerists trying to please Wall Street, led by Prabhakar Raghavan

>Rot Master Raghavan is here to squeeze as much as he can from the corpse of a product he beat to death with his bare hands.  Raghavan is a hall-of-fame rot economist, and one of the many managerial types that have caused immeasurable damage to the Internet in the name of growth and “shareholder value."

Gomes, 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 types led by Prabhakar Raghavan, a management consultant wearing an engineer costume.

A quick note: I used “management consultant” there as a pejorative. While he exhibits all the same bean-counting, morally-unguided behaviors of a management consultant, from what I can tell Raghavan has never actually worked in that particular sector of the economy.

But do you know who has? Sundar Pichai, who previously worked at McKinsey — arguably the most morally abhorrent company that has ever existed, having played roles both in the 2008 financial crisis (where it encouraged banks to load up on debt and flawed mortgage-backed securities) and the ongoing opioid crisis, where it effectively advised Purdue Pharma on how to “growth hack” sales of Oxycontin. McKinsey has paid nearly $1bn over several settlements due to its work with Purdue. 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 flesh-eating bacteria is to healthy tissue.

!!! I can't even get past that paragraph. Seriously, I'm sick.