Ex-Google Search head worried his team was ‘too involved with ads’

Google declared a Code Yellow in 2019 when it looked like the company might not meet quarterly search revenue goals. Ben Gomes had concerns.

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Google declared a “Code Yellow” after user queries slowed in February 2019 to find out why. Ben Gomes, then the head of Google Search, became concerned about a thinning firewall between Search and Ads, according to emails revealed during the ongoing U.S. vs. Google antitrust trial.

Why we care. We’ve been concerned to learn Google has increased ad prices to meet quarterly revenue goals and Ads, Search and Chrome teams working to boost ad revenue. While Google talks about always doing what’s best for users, clearly it also has done what’s best for Google revenue and profits.

The emails. In March 2019 emails, an “annoyed” Gomes told other executives that the Search team was “getting too close to the money,” Bloomberg reported (see PDF of emails here):

  • “I think it is good for us to aspire to query growth and to aspire to more users. But I think we are getting too involved with ads for the good of the product and company.”
  • “I am getting concerned that growth is all we are thinking about.”
  • “We could increase queries quite easily in the short term in user negative ways (turn off spell correction, turn off ranking improvement, place refinements all over the page).”

However, Gomes said during his testimony that he was “discussing things we would never do,” in that last bullet.

Code Yellow aftermath. The “emergency” lasted seven weeks, after which Google created a new metric to measure groups of queries, rather than user queries as a metric (“I think this metric of just using queries is not one that optimizes appropriately,” Gomes explained.).

Gomes left his role about a year later, when Prabhakar Raghavan became the new head of Google Search.


About the author

Danny Goodwin
Staff
Danny Goodwin is Editorial Director of Search Engine Land & Search Marketing Expo - SMX. He joined Search Engine Land in 2022 as Senior Editor. In addition to reporting on the latest search marketing news, he manages Search Engine Land’s SME (Subject Matter Expert) program. He also helps program U.S. SMX events.

Goodwin has been editing and writing about the latest developments and trends in search and digital marketing since 2007. He previously was Executive Editor of Search Engine Journal (from 2017 to 2022), managing editor of Momentology (from 2014-2016) and editor of Search Engine Watch (from 2007 to 2014). He has spoken at many major search conferences and virtual events, and has been sourced for his expertise by a wide range of publications and podcasts.

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