Google News exec Shailesh Prakash steps down amid rising tensions with publishers

Indian-origin Google executive Shailesh Prakash has resigned from his position, according to a The Wall Street Journal report.

Prakash acted as the Vice President and General Manager at Google News.

The development comes when relationships between Alphabet-owned Google News and publishers remain strained, globally.

Prakash has over 25 years of experience in technology, retail, and media.

He joined Google in November 2022 after 11 years at the Washington Post, where he was the Chief Product and Technology Officer.

He started his career with Motorola as a Software Development Engineer in 1995 and later moved to Sun Microsystems as a Software Development Engineer.

He has also worked with Microsoft as Principal Engineering Director for six years.

Prakash is an Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay graduate with B.Tech in Computer Science. He later pursued an MS in Computer Science from Clemson University and an MBA (General Management) from Georgia State University in 1995.

It is to be noted that the company has been facing heavy backlash from online publishers since last year, after Google introduced a feature called “AI Overviews” in May, which places an auto-generated summary at the top of search results, burying links to other sites.

The company reportedly doesn't share ad revenue with publishers whose material is cited in AI Overviews.

That apart, in India, digital news publishers have been complaining of not getting a fair share of advertisement revenue from Google. According to their complaints, they only get revenue only on the traffic they get on their sites and that they did not have access to data about the revenue generated by the search engine.