The man who killed Google Search?

Is Google desktop search dead? It's certainly been "shittier" but it's been adequate. Unlike Bing and Yahoo, there isn't clickbait fake news all over the screen. In a market where competitors are a bookmark away, it should be dead, but the big names seem to all collude on having a bad experience that makes more short-term money.

How is success being measured internally for "the man who killed Google Search"? Are profits for that piece moving on the right trajectory now in 2024?

Is Google really that hierarchical, that the decisions made by one person lead to all the problems? Maybe I'd believe it, but the article did not convince me that one guy was going against all efforts and better advice to tank the company.

Yeah, the amazing thing is that everyone talks about how Google destroyed search, but fails to acknowledge that nobody with a better search emerged. The amount of money at stake with regards to search is such that the decline of search across the board is far more a reflection of a systemic cause than anything that happened inside any particular company.