If you were involved with W3C around the time of XHTML 2.0 through to HTML 5.0 via WHATWG Ian is a well known person.

"At any rate, after exploring this, I naturally wondered if there wasn’t some easier way to do it; not as statistically valid, maybe, but adequate for the advertiser who just wants to improve his performance. I won’t go into the details here, but let’s just say that everyone wanted a Super Deluxe version even if it did require changing every part of the Ads system. No one wanted something quick-and-dirty that just did the job. This was Google, after all; “quick and dirty” would not get you promoted or get your talk accepted at a conference. It did not make me popular to suggest this."

I had a similar experience at Google--simple improvements such as parameter tuning are looked down on and rejected for being mere tinkering, even if the metrics are good. Meanwhile super complicated deep learning projects keep being added, even if they barely improve metrics. In the short term the complexity looks like hard work and leads to promotions, but long term it makes the system hard to maintain and understand.

Yeah. Like I said, the dream never died. Almost ten years later, it was revived & made real.

He was famous (or infamous) way before joining Google

Now that I think of it, the name IS vaguely familiar.