Are you just pulling this out of your ass? Per Wikipedia, Prabhakar R was not at Yahoo in 1998 and 2002.
> After working 14 years at IBM, he became senior vice president and chief technology officer at enterprise search vendor Verity in 2004.[16][14][12] In July 2005, he was hired by Yahoo! to lead Yahoo! Research in Sunnyvale, California.[17] At Yahoo!, he worked on research projects including search and advertising.[15][18] In 2011, he was appointed as Yahoo!'s chief strategy officer.[1]
> In 2012, Prabhakar joined Google after severe funding cuts in Yahoo!'s research division.[19] In 2018, he was put in charge of Ads and Commerce at Google and in 2020 his scope was expanded to include Search, Geo, and Assistant.[20] [21]
It sounds like you are either unintentionally spreading misinformation, or misinformed.
They never said he was there in those years or was involved in the failed acquisitions. Had Google been acquired then, yes, eventually Raghavan would have been calling the shots.
> After working 14 years at IBM, he became senior vice president and chief technology officer at enterprise search vendor Verity in 2004.[16][14][12] In July 2005, he was hired by Yahoo! to lead Yahoo! Research in Sunnyvale, California.[17] At Yahoo!, he worked on research projects including search and advertising.[15][18] In 2011, he was appointed as Yahoo!'s chief strategy officer.[1]
> In 2012, Prabhakar joined Google after severe funding cuts in Yahoo!'s research division.[19] In 2018, he was put in charge of Ads and Commerce at Google and in 2020 his scope was expanded to include Search, Geo, and Assistant.[20] [21]
It sounds like you are either unintentionally spreading misinformation, or misinformed.