• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, October 5, 2023

Executives working in Google Ads, Chrome and Search departments show how collectively they plotted to boost ad revenue, according to public emails shared during the federal antitrust trial by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Jerry Dischler, vice president of Google Ads; Prabhakar Raghavan, head of Google Search and Chrome; and Anil Sabharwal, product vice president and general manager at Google, along with others, shared an email exchange detailing ways to boost search queries on Chrome to improve ad revenue.

The context of the redacted email focuses on the “best thing for Google.” The executives discuss how the search team is working with Dischler’s group to accelerate the launch of a new mobile layout by the end of May 2019 and say that will help -- but if it breaks in mid to late May, Google will only get half a quarter of the impact or less.

The email says the "best shot at making the quarter" is if they get "an injection of at least [redacted]% , queries ASAP from Chrome.” Dischler admitted to caring more about revenue than the average person, but said it’s really for the sake of “our teams trying to live in high-cost areas another [redacted] in stock price loss will not be great for morale, not to mention the huge impact on our sales team.”

Emails like these have spilled many of Google’s secrets during this trial. And despite the sensitive discussion, Dischler wanted to be clear that the intention is not to “poison the culture of the team" and added that "this is why I have not pushed harder.”

For years Google has said that the ads team and organic search do not work together, but a 2019 email shows that was not the case. Anil Sabharwal, a Chrome executive at Google, responded that the group should move forward with changes to search ranking.

Dischler also proposed making additional changes to push ad revenue further. He wrote in the email that maybe the group should consider a “rollback” or “very scrappy tactical tweaks we can launch with holdback that we know will increase search queries?”

Looking for ranking changes to boost profits that the group could push out quickly, Dischler suggested increasing the vertical space between the search bar, icons and feed on a new tab to make search more prominent.