It's not just investors, Google is the quintessential example of a company that has taken metric based decision making too far. Everyone in the organisation has metrics to meet, and those KPIs affect promotions and pay. If your KPIs are entirely driven by revenue/profit it distorts the decision making of everyone and focuses on what large impact an individual or team can make to their bottom line, no mater what the collateral is.
This is I think a good example of that in action.
Another is the Google Domains shutdown. Domain names are a low margin commodity market, with a lot of competition. Someone somewhere in Google decided that for their own personal metrics selling the product was good for them. Removing a fairly thinly profitable team, and at the same time a windfall generated by them personally. It clearly should have been treated as an important value add for UX.
I do believe the penny is dropping and advertisers are beginning to see just how little Google cares about how well they are doing. As long as you continue to spend more, Google are happy, even if I'm you are making less yourself. Your advertising rep isn't their to help you improve your ads and make them more cost effective, they are there to extract more of your margin from you.
"Everyone in the organisation has metrics to meet, and those KPIs affect promotions and pay. If your KPIs are entirely driven by revenue/profit it ..."
That is how a publicly traded corporation works, whether you or I like it or not. When you get a listing on stock exchanges you are asking for investment from Tom, Dick and Harry. In return you sell your soul errr provide a return on that investment, in return for more investment.
I remember when I dumped Altavista from my browser and started using the cool new Google "Do no evil". I still have a pretty early gmail address, when it was invite only and 1GB looked like close to infinity or at least pretty bloody huge. I don't put anything useful into a Google thingie because I value my stuff. I'll be changing my search engine quite soon too.
It is all rather soulless and that is what saddens me. The whole raison d'etre for Google in the early days was to do good stuff, innovative engineering and so on. Then the profit motive or bust took over. It doesn't _have_ to but it did. Sadly the two cool kids with wonderful ideas were infected with the lust for world dominance or avarice or both.
I don't know what Google would look like if it had stayed private and stuck to what appear to be its initial values. I do suspect that Brin and his mate would still have been rich beyond my wildest dreams, along with a lot of other people. MS would have probably bought them or tried to.
"You Get What You Measure" means you have to be smart about what metrics you pick.
Instead, we've got a lot of really stupid, but "easy to track" metrics. Today's top-line is easy to track, how much you've burnt through customer goodwill for tomorrow isn't.
You also see a lot of metrics engineered to be gamed. NPS probably meant something in some early original use case, but it's turned into the universal consensus that we're not allowed to actually say "I only got 4.5 star service" out of fear the $10-per-hour schlub giving us that service will be punished for things outside his control.
I wonder-- we know what theoretical research for things in CS and IT look like, but are the "academic" sides of business schools trying to come up with better metrics?
I think that c-suite-shareholders and manager-shareholders generally make these decisions to pump their own investments in the company, and not directly for Tom, Dick, and Harry-shareholders. TD&H benefit, and will complain and drive the share price down if returns are not satisfactory, but the only effect of share prices being driven down is that c-suite-shareholders and manager-shareholders cannot cash out with as big of a sack of money.
So, I don't think that is how publicly traded companies HAVE to work, but yes that is how they do work. Managers do the best to pump the stock for their own personal gain, and who gives a damn if it fails long term because they want to be gone before then anyway.
Anyway, just my cynical view. I have no empirical evidence.
I'm a Brit, so we have a reasonably good Public Service Broadcaster - BBC. We do pay for it, via the TV License fee, which is basically a tax but at least we have a PSB that is tied to the values of the country (the mandate is defined by the govt) and at point of delivery is "free" (cf NHS). Yes, there are a lot of caveats that I won't dwell on here.
If you watch BBC channels or iPlayer (streaming) then you will not see any adverts, at all. A film will run from the start to the end and then you will be told what is on next plus a few "ads" on what other content is available or you have to dig out the clicker from under the dog to find something else to watch on iPlayer. The BBC currently runs four main TV channels plus radio and a lot of streaming stuff and more.
We also have ITV (Independent TeleVision), C4 (Channel 4) and C5. These are all from the analogue days and they have transitioned to digital to be joined by quite a collection.
Oh, sorry - ads ... ITV, C4, C5 and others can show ads. Because they compete with the BBC which has no ads, ad breaks are rather short.
I remember when I first saw Sky (sat. broadcaster, now all media options). They owned the lot and could do what they liked, or so they thought, and were probably right. Ad breaks were horrendously long and more frequent (probably approaching US normal)
I think I'll pass on the Sky type options and get a grip! When you find yourself whining on a SM platform about something like this, I probably ought to get out more.
This is I think a good example of that in action.
Another is the Google Domains shutdown. Domain names are a low margin commodity market, with a lot of competition. Someone somewhere in Google decided that for their own personal metrics selling the product was good for them. Removing a fairly thinly profitable team, and at the same time a windfall generated by them personally. It clearly should have been treated as an important value add for UX.
I do believe the penny is dropping and advertisers are beginning to see just how little Google cares about how well they are doing. As long as you continue to spend more, Google are happy, even if I'm you are making less yourself. Your advertising rep isn't their to help you improve your ads and make them more cost effective, they are there to extract more of your margin from you.