Nov 02, 2023 16:00:00

What is the emergency situation in 2019 that forced Google to issue 'Code Yellow'?

Google, which develops various Internet-related services such as search engines, browsers, and advertising services, is being sued by the U.S. Department of Justice for `

`illegally monopolizing the search engine market .'' Meanwhile, in February 2019, it was revealed that Google had declared ``Code Yellow'' due to ``slowness in user queries on search engines.''

Google's 2019 'Code Yellow' Blurred Line Between Search, Ads - Bloomberg
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-10-31/google-s-2019-code-yellow-blurred-line-between-search-ads

Ex-Google Search chief worried his team was too involved with ads

https://searchengineland.com/ex-google-search-head-worried-his-team-was-too-involved-with-ads-434050

Google has a golden rule that ``the advertising team and the search team do not interfere with each other,'' and search team engineers are not influenced by the advertising team's opinion that ``maximizing advertising revenue should be given priority,'' and they It is possible to proceed with further development of the engine.

However, in February 2019, Google suddenly encountered a problem where users' queries were slow. Therefore, Google declared a state of emergency called 'Code Yellow' and worked to investigate the cause and fix it.

An investigation by engineers from Google's search and Chrome browser teams has revealed that the wall of non-interference that separated the advertising and search teams is fading away, with queries being intentionally slowed down to meet revenue targets. It was discovered. The US Department of Justice points out, ``The slower the queries, the more opportunities Google has to place ads on search engines, resulting in increased revenue.''

Ben Gomez, head of Google's search team at the time, said in 2019, ``I think it's a good thing to aim for query growth.'' 'And it's important to get more users. But I think the search team is getting too involved in advertising, even if it's for the benefit of the product and the company.' Masu.

Furthermore, Mr. Gomez gave a harsh opinion to the search team, saying, ``I am worried that they are only thinking about the growth of the company.'' According to Mr. Gomez, most of the search team's personnel were put into projects to increase Google's revenue, and they did not invest enough in research and research.

Gomez added, ``Negative strategies for users, such as turning off correction of misspelled keywords or not improving rankings, can easily increase queries. This is a method that should never be taken.'

After the cause was investigated, Google's 'Code Yellow' was ended in mid-March 2019. Google has since created a new metric in response to 'Code Yellow' that measures only groups of queries, rather than user queries as a metric. 'The traditional way of measuring queries as metrics was not a good way to measure performance metrics,' Gomez recalls.