Industry News

Here’s Lorin Hochstein with another great post about the practice of learning from software incidents. He asks, What if everybody did everything right?

An alternative lens for making sense of an incident is to ask the question “how did this incident happen, assuming that everybody did everything right?” In other words, assume that everybody whose actions contributed to the incident made the best possible decision based on the information they had, and the constraints and incentives that...

I know there was a different The Cut essay that got more attention recently, but The Lure of Divorce is the one I actually read all the way through. A heartbreaking and beautiful story, so well written.

I didn’t read any of the internet commentary on it, but apparently it wasn’t great (shocking!). John Warner’s take on it resonates with me:

I have some things to say about the disturbing tendency of some readers to respond to attempts at interesting and true expression by leading with...

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today...

Google is investigating a possible issue with its search results where Google is not ranking adult-oriented sites for its brand name in some regions. Instead, Google ranks the adult site's help and support section above the home page for its name.

Google seems to have rolled out the Shop with Google AI feature to some users after announcing it back in November. I cannot see it unless I am logged into my personal Gmail account which is opted into SGE, on the Google Search app on iOS.

A week ago we wrote about the timing it takes to recover from a Google helpful content update. Then on Friday, Danny Sullivan, Google's Search Liaison, added more clarity on the fastest time a site can possibly recover after being negatively impacted by the helpful content update.

Google Search seems to be testing a new search bar design on mobile search. The bar shows the images, videos, news, shopping, maps, etc buttons but with a light blue background color, as a curved button.

Google Ads will update its unacceptable business practices portion of the misrepresentation policy in March 2024. The update says you cannot entice "users to part with money or information by impersonating or falsely implying affiliation with or endorsement by a public figure, brand, or organization."

Google is testing a new menu item in its search bar. The new item is "Forums" and it filters the search results to forums, such as Reddit, Hacker News, and other forums on the internet.

This is an excellent read from McKinsey. It turns out that, unsurprisingly, organizational health is (still) the key to long-term performance:

McKinsey’s Organizational Health Index (OHI) continues to show, for instance, that, over the long term, healthy organizations deliver three times the total shareholder returns (TSR) of unhealthy organizations, regardless of industry. Other findings point to greater resilience and higher financial performance in healthy organizations, even as the...