And KGs aren't mutually exclusive with ML -- e.g. https://arxiv.org/abs/1612.04844
Do they care less than they used to, though? Their placement on the screen as opposed to KG, widgets, and ads..and how that's progressed over time, seems to imply it.
That's impossible to measure, but the arguments you have employed regarding personnel changes do not demonstrate your point.
What of the decision to not replace Matt with a specific role or person? Is that not interesting?
And, again, I mentioned many other observations, not just Amit and Matt.
Edit: If the primary driver was lack of expertise in the ML direction, Uber seems an odd place to land, doesn't it?
I work for Google but this is pure speculation on my part.
Again, Amit may not have been aligned with the direction they're taking search. That doesn't mean Google doesn't care. In fact, it could mean just the opposite.
http://venturebeat.com/2016/11/02/uber-is-rolling-out-a-big-...
https://newsroom.uber.com/inferring-uber-rider-destinations/
There's other references, but you get the idea.
It has done this by a) Actually improving its spammy backlink detection, and b) Scary webmasters away from spammy SEO tactics through sudden updates like Panda/Penguin and straight up propaganda.
Once you solve the spam issue, Google's search results organically become better. Ergo, it doesn't need to spend that much time monitoring and improving them
I wonder how much they actually improved the webspam thing.
The search results you see today, versus years past, suggest a sort of "cheat" to do that...something like a seed set of trusted sites (big brands, universities, government sites, etc) , and weighting based on distance from those seeds.
I say that because I'll often get results that are heavy on authority, but low on relevance. What I'm looking for is on pages 2 and 3, on more niche, less prominent sites. It didn't used to be that way.