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Comment by dekhn | Hacker News Reader

When sundar took over he changed some policies within google to reduce previous commitments to a high quality internet, with the goal of increased growth. This includes a mixing of ads and search results in a way that maximizes revenue as well as many other dark patterns. I believe that Google concluded that it was going to lose relevance and market share if they didn't do this. Note also that the vast majority of google revenue in ads comes from mobile video ads, not search results these days.

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The bit about mobile video revenue is not true.

"Today, Google parent Alphabet Inc. reported a record $65.1 billion in revenue during the third quarter of 2021, with the company’s advertising business increasing 43.2% to $53.1 billion. Quarterly search advertising made up the bulk of revenue with $37.9 billion in the third quarter, rising from $26.3 billion during the same period in 2020. YouTube ads accounted for another $7.2 billion—up from $5 billion in Q3 2020—and Google’s ad network revenue brought in $7.9 billion."

I used to work there and I think my statement is technically correct, regardless of what the breakdown in the earnings say.

Oh, sorry- I should have said "profit", not "revenue".

They will lose relevance and eventually market share for doing these things. It almost seems inevitable that companies eventually degrade in quality and die or become shadows of their former selves due to compromises brought about by the endless growth expected by investors.

Sundar never "took over" in anything but a job title sense. Larry and Sergey continue to hold supermajority voting power over the company's board. The business operates the way Larry and Sergey want it to.

I think people want an excuse to justify their previous positive outlooks on Larry and Sergey by claiming something has changed. But Larry and Sergey still sit in charge of an extremely harmful company under investigation for numerous types of illegal and inappropriate conduct. Both had inappropriate relationships with subordinates that should've gotten them both fired, and both of them have yachts and/or islands that are worth more than some small countries.

Larry and Sergey have absolutely zero involvement in Google's daily activities (I don't think Sergey even comes around X any more, but might still hang around research once in a while).

Larry handed sundar effective control over Google when he promoted himself to Alphabet. Even 10 years ago, Larry lost interest in search (it was really sad for the search folks when they realized that). Larry picked sundar because sundar is a robot that makes money, and larry needs that money for his longterm mission.

I'm not sure what you think the long term mission is, but I suspect taking private yachts to and from his private island is most of it.

They may not be day to day involved, but they vote down any shareholder proposals to fix what Google is doing, they're aware of what's going on. And the sleezy practices started long before Alphabet did, ads and search results have been becoming less distinguishable for a decade.

And Sundar's claim to fame, lest we forget, is hijacking everyone's browser settings by injecting the Google Toolbar into every Adobe Flash Player installer.

>Larry and Sergey have absolutely zero involvement in Google's daily activities

Unless you work directly with one of these three people I don't know how you could make such a claim. Press releases don't count as reliable sources

I did, in fact, work directly with those people. For a while, I sat near Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat (I have a patent with them) and interacted with Larry and Sergey closely enough to get a fairly good read on them.

> Note also that the vast majority of google revenue in ads comes from mobile video ads, not search results these days.

So theoretically in a few years Google might decide to kill their search product and nobody will really come in and make another one because after all the years of bad search results from Google everyone will naturally conclude that search on the internet just doesn't work.

That's right, I'm so paranoid I think that song is about me.

> When sundar took over he changed some policies within google to reduce previous commitments to a high quality internet, with the goal of increased growth.

Do you have more details for this?

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