Shailesh Prakash, vice president and CEO of Google News, resigned amid growing tensions with news publications accusing the search engine giant of reaping significant advertising revenue, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing anonymous sources familiar with the matter.

However, the official reason for Prakash’s resignation is yet to be known.

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Why did news publications clash with Google?

Google’s business practices with news have come under intense scrutiny, especially as news organizations rely on the search engine for traffic.

For example, AI Overviews, which was introduced last May, offers an AI-generated summary on top of search results while hiding links to other sites. In response, the News Media Alliance, a nonprofit representing more than 2,200 publishers, said the feature would be “catastrophic for our traffic” and even called on the feds to intervene.

Additionally, Google was also accused of having used copyrighted content from publishers to train its AI tools without attribution.

According to a New York Post report, Google was even alleged to have used its access to the Office of the United States Trade Representative to undermine foreign regulations such as Canada’s Online News Act, which required Google to pay for the right to display news content.

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Who is Shailesh Prakash?

Shailesh Prakash joined Google in November 2022 after an 11-year career at Washington PostHe served as chief product and technology officer and previously also worked at Sears and Microsoft.

At the Washington Post, he is credited with guiding the newspaper’s digital shift and also led the creation of its internal ad technology business.

He even worked closely with billionaire Jeff Bezos, who bought the newspaper for $500 million in 2013.

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