Comment by DanielHB

7 months ago

> So blaming Raghavan for what happened at Yahoo! is just stupid.

He joined yahoo in 2005, if my memory serves correctly yahoo was already pretty much IBM-dead by then.

The downfall of yahoo was due to the hard push of popup ads in the late 90s and very early 2000s. Much like the google history of today though, maximising metrics at the cost of user experience. But it all happened in yahoo way before he joined.

I can't sign up to blaming 1 person for a company's failure.

But people need a reason however wrong and a symbol for it. Article is painting growth-hacking as "the" reason for Google's failure and a single person as a symbol. a spineless management puppet sheepskinned as a scientist. Classic expose material.

I don't agree with the article's emotion or conclusions but I can't deny that Google is in a bad, bad place. Founders don't care. User's being preyed on. No one to fight for the user's interests. Parasites eating it up feeding on whatever's left. employees and users expressing betrayal and abuse. In the headlines for all the wrong reasons.

And for the world, a loss. Almost like a good friend gone the way of drug addiction.