Google search chief warns employees: The good days are over, and you must move forward faster

In news on April 24, Prabhakar Raghavan, head of Google’s search business, reminded employees that at last month’s all-hands meeting, Google search Teams need to adapt to the "new operating environment" and are encouraged to move faster. In response to this directive, the Google search team has begun taking a series of measures to improve the quality and efficiency of search services. They will strengthen algorithm optimization and improve the accuracy and relevance of search results. At the same time, they will also improve the user interface to make search more

As the head of Google’s core departments such as search, advertising, maps and commerce, Raghavan reports directly to Google CEO Sundar Pichai (Sundar Pichai) )report. He spoke at the conference to the 25,000 full-time employees of Google's knowledge and information division. As Google's CEO, Sundar Pichai attaches great importance to Google's core departments, including Google search, advertising, maps and commerce. Raghavan spoke on behalf of these departments at the conference, reporting work progress and results to Pichai and other executives. The conference is a

Conference audio shows, Raghavan pointed out when talking about the search business:"We have to realize that the current situation is completely different from 15 to 20 years ago."As the long-term overlord in search, Google has become one of the most profitable and valuable companies in the world.

Raghavan also mentioned that Google’s digital advertising business is “all over the world.” He emphasized that in the past three years, Google’s annual digital advertising revenue has grown to more than $100 billion, which is more than Starbucks, Mazda, and TikTok combined.

Although Google is well-known in Silicon Valley for its free lunches and generous campus benefits, Raghavan warned that growth is becoming increasingly difficult for Google.

He admitted: "Life can't always be easy."

In his roughly 35-minute speech, Raghavan repeatedly used sports metaphors and rallying cry.

He said: "If the market reality is clear, we need to react quickly like athletes." He mentioned the intensification of competition and the challenges of the regulatory environment. Although Google did not clearly identify specific opponents, Google is generating The field of artificial intelligence is facing competitive pressure from Microsoft and OpenAI.

People choose us because we are trustworthy, Raghavan said. “They may be attracted by novelty, but ultimately they turn to Google to verify what they see because Google is a trusted source. . In this era of digital artificial intelligence, this has become particularly important."

In his speech, Raghavan also announced some specific adjustment measures. He said that Google plans to add teams closer to users in markets such as India and Brazil, and revealed that it is shortening the completion time of certain projects to speed up the process.

He pointed out: "We can learn by accelerating the speed and frequency of execution."

People familiar with the matter revealed that although resources have been reduced after cost cutting, Google's cloud computing business unit has also Ask employees to move faster.

Regarding Raghavan’s speech, a Google spokesperson said: “We are focused on taking action quickly in the face of huge opportunities.” The spokesperson emphasized Google’s addition of generative artificial intelligence and artificial intelligence to its search business. Measures to improve search quality, adding: "There is more to come." Thousands of reports.

Many of the things Raghavan mentioned in his speech were not brought up for the first time. Google has been cutting costs since parent company Alphabet announced in early 2023 that it would lay off about 12,000 people. Google’s layoffs are continuing this year, with even more layoffs in early 2024. Google Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat said in a memo last week that the company is reorganizing its financial department and layoffs are part of it.

But Raghavan made it clear that the current situation is not just a continuation of 2023. He noted that although it was only three months since the last plenary session, for some it felt as if three years had passed.

Raghavan said, "The past three months have been a lot of ups and downs, with highs and lows." During that time, Google launched its artificial intelligence image generator. Google decided to pull the feature in February after users discovered and posted false content. As more and more users turn away from traditional internet searches to get information, Google is restructuring its business to stay ahead of the competition in artificial intelligence.

Alphabet is expected to report its latest quarterly earnings on Thursday, with expectations that the company will post year-over-year revenue growth for the second consecutive quarter. While this growth rate is an improvement from previous quarters, the improvement is limited compared to Google's worst past performance.

Alphabet's revenue and profit exceeded expectations last quarter, but revenue from its advertising business fell short of market expectations, causing the company's stock price to plunge more than 6%. At the same time, rapid developments in the field of artificial intelligence are attracting investors' attention again.

“We are now entering a whole new cost era,” Raghavan said. He explained that as companies invest heavily in generative AI, they are spending significantly more on hardware.

Raghavan added: "The organic growth is slowing down, and the number of new devices is not coming to the market as much as it used to be."

He also said: "This means that in the In this new operating environment, if we want to achieve growth, we have to work harder.”

Raghavan also said that as the company “moves forward in a regulatory environment that is different from the past,” it faces challenges. challenges are also increasing.

He talked about the EU’s recently implemented Digital Markets Act and said the company was also evaluating what new requirements the European Commission would impose on Google. The bill, aimed at cracking down on anti-competitive behavior by technology companies, came into effect last month.

Raghavan admitted frankly: "This does have an impact on us."

He urged employees to "seize this historic moment" and "take action based on the current situation of the market."

He said: "Although it is not easy, this is a critical moment that determines our destiny."

120 hours a week

Laga Wan said Google must address "systemic" challenges and reinvent competitiveness that may have been overlooked.

Raghavan specifically praised the team responsible for developing the artificial intelligence model Gemini. He mentioned that these team members increased their work weeks from 100 to 120 hours to quickly resolve bugs in Google's image generation tools. He said the team solved about 80% of the issues in just ten days.

Despite this, Google has not yet restored the ability to generate images of people. After the tool was taken down in February, Google's head of artificial intelligence, Demis Hassabis, said the feature would be back online within weeks.

Raghavan clarified that the failure of the image generation tool was not due to insufficient employee efforts. He emphasized: "I want to be clear that this is not because someone slacked off and messed up."

Raghavan pointed out that the company has proven its ability to act quickly on key matters. He noted that the Bard and Magi teams, which focus on AI search capabilities, launched new products within a few months last year.

He also hinted that having sufficient manpower does not mean that the task will be completed. “We realize that even if we put 2,000 engineers on these projects, it’s not necessarily going to get the job done,” Raghavan revealed, indicating that the company will pay close attention to the size and efficiency of its teams.

Raghavan also responded to criticism about corporate bureaucracy. Employees have long complained that Google's growing bureaucracy hinders the rapid release of products, a problem that has grown worse in recent years.

In 2022, in addition to conducting Google’s annual survey, Googlegeist, CEO Pichai also launched an event called the Simplicity Sprint to collect employee feedback on improving work efficiency.

Raghavan pointed out: "Turning a good idea into a market product requires too much approval. This is not Google's style." He emphasized that this should not be the normal way of operation.

He revealed that leadership is actively eliminating unnecessary layers, in line with Pichai's earlier remarks.

“We’ve learned a lot over the past few quarters,” Raghavan said. "I can't say we've solved all the problems. But the key is how we respond and learn from them."

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