[mindcrime]

It's partly that, but Google's counter has always been this refrain of "we are a data-driven company". I guess that is better than completely subjective metrics, in some respects, but it introduces another bias, which is focusing on things that can be measured.

Being "data focused" is probably a Good Thing in a very general sense, but there are real dangers that come with that. For example, there's a form of "data myopia" you can develop, which is best expressed by the old saw "data and optimization can help you get better at doing $SOMETHING, but don't tell you if you're doing the right $SOMETHING in the first place."

I saw a lot of successful promo cases that were based on pushing metrics. That just rewards quantifiable things, and disadvantages unquantifiable things. Worse, it makes people introduce bullshit measures and game them.

And of course there's Goodhart's Law[1] which leads to situations where trying to be "data driven" actually makes things worse when people start trying to "game" the metrics.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law