Wanna listen to this story instead? Check out this week's Better Offline podcast, "The Man That Destroyed Google Search," available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts.
This is the story of how Google Search died, and the people responsible for killing it.
The story...
I found this article a bit too elaborate and digressive, but it has a lot of content and sourcing.
In one email, Fox adds that there was a “pretty big disconnect between what finance and ads want” and what search was doing.
When Gomes pushed back on the multiple requests for growth
In a WIRED interview from 2021, Steven Levy said Raghavan “isn’t CEO of Google— he just runs the place,” and described his addition to the company as “a move from research to management.”
Interesting deep dive and very much worth a read. I'd say it probably underestimates the weight of finance-related pressures coming from the CFO's office, though.