Meet the exec tasked with screwing up Google search

#296: Big one today as the new head of Google search reveals how she intends to end text and shift content discovery behind a paywall...

Update: Google just axed the head of its Gemini AI Sissie Hsiao. She’s being replaced by Josh Woodward, who runs Google Labs team which built the break-out success NotebookLM.

The reason she’s being moved is to “sharpen our focus on the next evolution of the Gemini app”, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis told staff.

Woodward would lead “chapter two” of Google AI, he added. As I reported earlier this week, this will be voice- and image-activated search in a mobile app behind a paywall.

This is Google’s big pivot away from ad-funded search which was declared an illegal monopoly by a US court last year.

Big changes are coming… Here’s what you need to know 👇

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Your phone rings. It’s your boss. “Hey, can you pop in, I have a job for you? I need you to destroy the most impactful era of human innovation in history. Kill Google search.”

It was an ask too far for the former head, NASA scientist Pandu Nayak. He waltzed off to an easier role after starring at the antitrust trial.

Into his shoes stepped Liz Reid. She first came into view last year after stepping on stage to take heat over AI Overviews’ flops.

Now she’s the top exec tasked with ending search as we know it, upending the open web, and resetting its economics ahead of the Google break-up.

And her vision for the future is radical:

• A phased end for google.com and the search bar.

• New hands-free AI search through voice and vision, and

• The end of free search - and taking it behind a paywall.

This is big. She’s as critical to Google as CEO Sundar Pichai and the OG founder Sergey Brin, who’s back at his desk lending a hand in the pivot.

So, who is she? How does the leader described by colleagues as “a steamroller” intend to enact her radical do-over? And what does it mean for publishers and the open web?

That’s what I’m revealing today.

Welcome to new subs from the International News Media Association, AI marketplace Xometry in Maryland, USA, UK-based Filta.tech which matches publishers with tech solutions, the Canadian Association of Broadcasters, Digiday’s team in New York, the new Gamut podcast network in Atlanta, Georgia, Nine News in Australia, and many many more, including a global director of marketing from Google, so this will be interesting…

Don’t miss the new Future Media podcast, now streaming on Apple, Spotify, and wherever you get your pods…