Google’s Job Ads deprecation felt around the industry

When you don’t want people to notice a change, you use non-colloquial language, as in Google’s Job Ads deprecation. Yep, deprecation. They could’ve said, ‘We’re killing Google Job Ads’ or even, ‘We’re shutting down Google Job Ads’, but no – they said “Job Ads alpha is being deprecated” (a real quote from a real Google rep).

Deprecated is basically programmer language, not run-of-the-mill normal human conversation language. It is less harsh that ‘shutting down’ or ‘eliminating’, eh?

The news of Google’s, umm, ‘deprecation’ was received with surprise and even some unhappiness around the job board industry. Immediately, everyone began speculating: why?

• Google’s take: ” Alphas & betas are routinely deprecated and the process for making such decisions is usually not made public…“. Again, a real quote from a Google rep.
• Alexander Chukovski: Legal issues, UX, and redirect loops, but… ” I think they are only killing the format, but not the sole idea of having a dedicated ad product for jobs.”
• AIM Group: “Shutdown due to poor performance, legal concerns in Europe”.

And of course, my take – which is informed by nothing more than watching Google launch various products and services over the past 15 years, only to deprecate them: It was most probably the legal issues – always lurking in the background, but coming to the foreground as the alpha got closer to beta. The lawyers met with the accountants, and agreed that Google Job Ads weren’t worth the trouble.

We’ll never know for sure, of course – unless a Google insider decides to ‘spill the beans’. But the ‘why’ matters less than the ‘now what‘. Google Job Ads promised – depending on where you stood – to upset the programmatic market, or to further cement the dominance of the large job boards, or to eliminate job boards and elevate employers. Now that they’ll be gone, we’re pretty much back where we started. So each of these constituents will have to achieve their objectives without Google Job Ads.

Thus:

• The programmatic market chugs on
• Large job boards keep getting bigger
• And job boards live to see another sunrise

It’s an exciting world, isn’t it? And now we can all use the word ‘deprecate’ without being embarrassed!

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