Yelp’s Six-Year Conflict with Google

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/01/technology/yelp-google-european-union-antitrust.html

by gaplus • 9 years ago

138 170 9 years ago

nytimes.com

quickben• 9 years ago

I'm under the impression that only EU slaps antitrust charges lately.

Fej• 9 years ago

Which is a shame. I doubt any real antitrust cases will be brought here in the US for the next 4 years.

kefka4• 9 years ago

Honestly, I'd say longer than that. The Democrats have very little impetus to do them either, given their corporate funding record.

It's been about 30 years since the Democrats gave up on the working classes to cater to "Cause of the Week", "Big Media", and associated areas. Even Obama, with the ACA, set it up that we're required to pay for-profit companies for insurance. He even had a super-majority to enable Medicare for All... but didn't.

Republicans claim they're for the "Common Working Man", but time and again we see policies that ascribe to 'Socialism for the Rich, and Capitalism for the Poor'. And that's not discussing Trump, who has been criticized by both US parties for his actions. (I'm focusing on R-Congress and state governors.)

Something's got to give, and I don't see this going well at all. The fact that regulators and congress refuse to do anything is just a symptom.

valuearb2• 9 years ago

Apparently only if you buy an elephant for one of their regulators.

nostromo• 9 years ago

It seems political. The EU is taking on a lot of US companies with antitrust complaints but few EU companies.

ocdtrekkie6• 9 years ago

This is an excellent way to try and distract from the actual issues the EU has charged them with, and try to delegitimize the claims of one of the largest governments in the world because you like the company they're going after this week.

The EU has filed plenty of antitrust complaints against EU companies, but the reality is, particularly in the tech field, US monopolists are dominating. The fact that there are more US companies breaking the law, does not mean the EU filing more cases against US companies is political.

ionised3• 9 years ago

That's a US-centric viewpoint, and the same could be said about the US and its attitude towards for example, European banks.

It's a pointless argument and only serves to distract from the actual issues relating to Google's operation.

wannabe_miner• 9 years ago

Unrelated but related, what is it like to work at Yelp?

I was recently contacted by them for a position but it didn't inspire confidence. The mention of a "shoestring operation" in this article is making me believe I made the right choice.

x0x02• 9 years ago

It depends on position. They treat CSRs like absolute shit -- see Talia Jane. Given a choice, I'd prefer not to work for companies that treat any employee like that.

scurvy• 9 years ago

Curious, but is there any company that treats CSR's really well and have a 85%+ employee satisfaction?

I've worked at a lot of great companies, and the CSR groups are always unhappy and have miserable employee satisfaction ratings. I also started my career in customer service, so I've seen good and bad firsthand.

jimmywanger3• 9 years ago

I've read her article. (https://medium.com/@taliajane/an-open-letter-to-my-ceo-fb73d...)

It really has nothing substantive to say except "I'm struggling, pay me more."

She even points to several facts in her article.

"She ended up leaving the company and moving east, somewhere the minimum wage could double as a living wage."

"But boy did I not anticipate a decade and a half ago that a car and a credit card and an apartment would all be symbols of stress, not success."

If you hate the job that badly or feel like you're not being renumerated properly, you have options open. I'm assuming she doesn't have a house, because of the mention of her apartment.

Yelp is not holding a gun to your head. Neither are they responsible for paying you what you think is necessary for a comfortable life.

gdilla• 9 years ago

That was only in reference to their lobbying "office" in washington DC (no formal office, just a seat in a coworking place).

mcguire• 9 years ago

Isn't Yelp the company that hosts reviews of local businesses while at the same time getting paid for advertising by those businesses?

Buge• 9 years ago

Same with Google right?

home_boi2• 9 years ago

They lowball you (or rather, their stock performance is garbage and they won't adjust RSUs to account for that).

Their SF headquarters is a standard silicon valley playground. I'm not sure why the author tried to differentiate Yelp from regular SF/Silicon Valley companies by only mentioning its drab satellite office

bhldr2• 9 years ago

As an engineer, it's actually a pretty great employer. I enjoy working there and there's lots of folks who've been there for many years.

jrheard• 9 years ago

I worked there as a software engineer for six years, first in SF, then remotely in Oregon. I loved it. The people are brilliant and friendly, the codebase and tooling are top-notch. If you're a programmer, it's a great place to work.

JCzynski3• 9 years ago

Not good. The codebase is a terrible monolith using frameworks long-dead everywhere else, there's poor coordination.

jszymborski• 9 years ago

Interestingly, the other firms cited in the article as taking up the Google fight are Microsoft and Oracle, which both have had their antitrust issues.

This definitely looks like a case of "well, we got in trouble for this, so they should get their come-upings too!".

ocdtrekkie6• 9 years ago

It's always worth noting that today's underdog could be tomorrow's monopolist. When any of these companies get on top, they'll do anything to stay that way.

So like, today I would consider Microsoft an ally against the current monopoly party, but I have no doubt that Microsoft would return to their old ways if they were on top again.

redm• 9 years ago

"Mr. Stoppelman feels he has no choice. Like a lot of small internet companies, Yelp lives in a world where one company, Google, accounts for an outsize share of its business, and could destroy it at any time."

That sums it up for Yelp and many others, myself included. Combine that reality with the black box that Google is, in many ways, and you have an inaccessible behemoth who's decisions decide the fate of many.

Googles combination of Search, Browser, and Advertising dominance gives it a unique position of power. Then there are secondary markets like Android that just buttress their position.

I see the fight raging about net neutrality and keep thinking that Google neutrality is just as important. It affects people in even more meaningful ways, determining where they go and what they see on the Internet.

cft• 9 years ago

Just like it was impossible to start a car company after say 1920 due to the established players, it has become impossible to start and run a large consumer internet company where the primary function is information retrieval/search like in Yelp. If Google maps did not exist (with "Local Guides" now), Yelp's market cap could have been 5x of what it is. They were lucky that they started in 2004 when Google bombing was still possible: had they started more recently, they would not have gotten even the market cap they have now: high barrier to entry, no cheap distribution channels.

nradov6• 9 years ago

I can't tell whether you're being sarcastic? Several car companies operating today were founded after 1920.

putlake3• 9 years ago

I agree. As a web publisher who depends on advertising for revenue and Google for traffic, things are getting more and more difficult. Google providing answers in the search box robs legitimate publishers of traffic. But the industry is so fragmented that a concerted legal action against Google is not possible.

Since this is HN, I expect people are going to start chanting "Die you ad supported publishers or find a new business model. We love Google because it's great for the users to read the answer on Google and not have to visit your ad laden site". I understand this sentiment but don't agree with it. Users love anything that's free. That does not mean Google can steal it and give it to them.

The implicit contract between publishers and Google is that publishers let Google crawl and index their content. In return, Google includes the publisher in their search results so users can find the information they are looking for and publishers get traffic. Outright copying of this information is stealing because it robs publishers of their revenue stream.

AznHisoka2• 9 years ago

OK, so now that implicit contract changed and says Google can show that information above the organic search results. Given this, publishers do have a choice of blocking Google in their robots.txt.

this is an implicit agreement (not explicit). the agreement changed. publishers still have a chance to respond... dont like it? block google! (its just 1 line in robots.txt) go rely on word of mouth, bing, ads and emailing to get traffic!

dont want to do that? oh i see... well that means you voluntarily agree to the agreement and have no right to complain.

concede_pluto• 9 years ago

it's great for the users to read the answer on Google

Do you disagree with that part? If a user reads a couple of sentences and decides they won't gain anything more by reading your page, are they wrong?

nradov6• 9 years ago

Web publishers have gotten lazy. Instead of becoming more dependant on Google and then complaining about being marginalized they should put more effort into marketing directly to their target audience and finding non-advertising revenue models.

parthdesai• 9 years ago

"Mr. Stoppelman feels he has no choice. Like a lot of small internet companies, Yelp lives in a world where one company, Google, accounts for an outsize share of its business, and could destroy it at any time."

Ah the irony. Yelp is the same website that bullied small businesses to pay for positive reviews[1].

[1]http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/yelp-accused-of-bullying-bus...

timr3• 9 years ago

"Ah the irony. Yelp is the same website that bullied small businesses to pay for positive reviews"

No, Yelp is accused of this. Nobody has ever shown it to be true.

(I can also tell you, as someone who worked there, that it definitely is not true, but you don't have to take my word for it. You just have to not confuse accusations with facts.)

AznHisoka2• 9 years ago

It would help if Yelp allowed new, emerging search engines (potential google competitors) to crawl their site. But their robots.txt only allows Google, Bing and a few others to crawl them (https://yelp.com/robots.txt)

allow all crawlers and I would have at least a little sympathy for Yelp.

bdcravens3• 9 years ago

Presumably they want a legal defense against scrapers.

anindha2• 9 years ago

There are probably food delivery and restaurant reservation startups complaining that Yelp has a monopoly position on restaurant search.

curun1r2• 9 years ago

Mr. Stoppelman feels he has no choice. Like a lot of small internet companies, Yelp lives in a world where one company, Google, accounts for an outsize share of its business, and could destroy it at any time

The same basic thing could be said for most of Yelp's customers. Many would prefer that Yelp not exist or not index them but are forced to buy expensive plans with Yelp to have some measure of control over their public profile. It's basically a modern-day version of the protection rackets employed by organized crime. As much as I think Google has outsized power and does need to be reined in in certain circumstances, I have very little sympathy for Yelp being subjected to the same sort of undesirable influence from a larger, more powerful company that they exert on much smaller companies.

annexrichmond3• 9 years ago

but are forced to buy expensive plans with Yelp to have some measure of control over their public profile

what evidence do you have to suggest that (a) business owners are forced to buy plans from Yelp (b) there's a strong correlation between business owners who don't pay Yelp and are not successful? I'm pretty sure these have been debunked[1] but if you have data I'd like to see it.

in spite of this, even if you personally believe Yelp has sketchy business practices, is unethical, etc. it does not follow that what Google is doing is OK. There are actually laws that attempt to stop what Google is doing but as far as I know, Yelp's not breaking any laws.

[1] http://people.hbs.edu/mluca/papers%20on%20ris/fakeittillyoum...

themacguffinman4• 9 years ago

Mr. Stoppelman feels he has no choice. Like a lot of small internet companies, Yelp lives in a world where one company, Google, accounts for an outsize share of its business, and could destroy it at any time.

The same could be said of Yelp:

"Mr. Restaurant Owner feels he has no choice. Like a lot of small restaurants, he lives in a world where one company, Yelp, accounts for an outsize share of its business, and could destroy it at any time."

Google's power in the consumer market is merely commensurate to the market value they create, just like Yelp.

mrunkel• 9 years ago

I find all this hand wringing over Google to be so tiring. Google is doing what is best for it's customers. Be that advertisers and/or searchers.

If they stop doing that, they'll lose their market dominance.

Last I checked, nobody is forced to use google to search for things, nobody if forced (except for perhaps android users) to use Chrome.

I'm not a laissez-faire capitalist by any means, but I don't see that Google has an unfair monopoly. They have achieved their dominance because their services are viewed as "best" by the majority of folks out there.

Nobody complains when Google suddenly starts delivering more customers to their web properties, only if traffic suddenly dies out.

mdasen• 9 years ago

If they stop doing that, they'll lose their market dominance.

That's precisely the issue. It can be illegal to use your market dominance in one area (search) to reinforce or create market dominance in other areas. Microsoft had the best operating system and a browser that they wanted people to use. People preferred Netscape, but Microsoft used its OS dominance to kill off Netscape.

It is ok to be dominant in a product. You aren't, however, allowed to use the dominance in one product to gain you dominance in other products. Google has dominance in search, but using that to kill off competitors for their lesser-liked products isn't fair.

They have achieved their dominance because their services are viewed as "best" by the majority of folks out there.

Their search service is viewed as "best" my most, but that doesn't mean their reviews service is. That's what's at issue. Being the best at one thing shouldn't allow you to stifle people that are better at another thing. That is certainly not best for consumers.

If Google were 20% of search traffic, they could do many things because there's no dominance at issue. Since Google is the vast majority of search traffic, they can effectively eliminate most competitors. Starting a reviews site? Your listings will fall below our own regardless of their merit. Starting a videos site, YouTube alternatives will always be shown first even if it's not what the user is looking for.

YouTube should be popular on its own merit, not based on Google using its search dominance to choke competitors. Google's reviews should be popular on their own merit, not based on Google using its search dominance to kill off Yelp.

I do want to clarify that I'm not saying that Google is guilty of doing this, but that when you get to a certain market dominance, you can kill off competitors that are better than you by starving them rather than by being better than them. It's important that third-parties can compete with Google's non-search services without having Google's search service unreasonably favor Google's non-search services.

sillysaurus3• 9 years ago

It is ok to be dominant in a product. You aren't, however, allowed to use the dominance in one product to gain you dominance in other products.

Unfortunately there are countless counterexamples. It's an interesting ideal, but without court action it's toothless. And court action risks having a chilling effect on certain kinds of positive forces.

notatoad2• 9 years ago

It can be illegal to use your market dominance in one area (search) to reinforce or create market dominance in other areas

I think it's a stretch to say that searching for HVAC business listings and searching for HVAC business reviews are really different markets. If google had an HVAC subsidiary and they suppressed all search results and ads for competing HVAC companies, that would be abusing their dominant position in the search market to create dominance in another market. But is it really monopolistic behaviour to use their web search dominance to succeed in a slightly more specific sector of the web search market? You can use google to find reviews of products and services. They advertise alongside those search results. That is their core business. Yelp is a straight-up competitor. "Google is better than us in the market we compete in" isn't a valid anti-trust complaint.

adameast9000• 9 years ago

I couldn't agree more. Look at internet speed tests. I used the ookla speed test because it was the first result until one day Google had created its own, built right into the search results page. I don't know which product is better, but it's easy to see ookla getting starved out by this regardless of product merit.

loceng• 9 years ago

Do you have any views on Facebook and their product line?

ma2rten• 9 years ago

It can be illegal to use your market dominance in one area (search) to reinforce or create market dominance in other areas.

As far as I know it's only illegal when there is harm to consumers. Antitrust laws are meant to protect consumers, not competitors.

thezilch• 9 years ago

Can you provide a specific issue?

If I put a competitor (eg. yelp, angie[slist], etc) into my search query, I get only results for those competitors. Leave the qualifying term out, and I get a SERP of all non-Google review sites. But again, I enter "yelp pizza" and get all Yelp results. Hell, I enter "pizza reviews" and get Yelp as the top 3 links of my SERP.

tuxracer2• 9 years ago

nobody if forced (except for perhaps android users) to use Chrome

Unlike iOS you can install different browsers on Android directly from the Play Store. These can actually be different browsers with their own rendering engines not just alternative UIs on top of Chrome. Firefox on Android for example uses the actual Firefox rendering engine, not Chrome.

ekianjo5• 9 years ago

You can, but by default you get Chrome, which is about the same thing people were fighting Microsoft over in the Netscape-IE days, but this time on Android.

ojbyrne• 9 years ago

I see Firefox and Chrome and several other browsers in the iOS AppStore.

the_mitsuhiko2• 9 years ago

Google is doing what is best for it's customers.

But is it? Because right now I basically can't stop using Google services at this point because they pushed out many others from the market. I would however greatly prefer some competition in the field.

nradov6• 9 years ago

Which Google services no longer have competition?

haltingthoughts2• 9 years ago

Looking at what is best for consumers is missing the point. The point is that when companies use leverage in one market to help themselves or hurt competitors unfairly in other markets it stifles competition.

It's hard to be a web browser company when it comes bundled with the OS. Do you really want a world where you choose Apple, Google, or Amazon once for everything everywhere and that is the only choice you get? Or do you want Unix philosophy for businesses and mix and match however you feel?

baddox• 9 years ago

Isn't stifling competition only bad if it harms consumers? I don't understand how what's best for consumers isn't the point.

MichaelBurge• 9 years ago

These anti-trust laws were originally created to whack railroad companies, which had huge capital investments and "natural monopolies".

Google does have some investment in its data centers, but people never make the explicit argument that the $11 billion/year in data centers is what causes them to be a monopoly. They make the much more abstract "market dominance" argument that I don't buy.

The only thing that I'd consider a monopoly in the same spirit would be the ISPs. It's stupid to dig up the streets twice just for "competition", so there's a natural monopoly. And it'd probably cost untold billions to rebuild it.

euske• 9 years ago

I find it amusing how their argument is similar to the MS' antitrust argument in 90s.

Microsoft: "An OS should include everything. Third party apps aren't needed. It's only good for consumers."

Google: "A search engine should include everything. Third party websites aren't needed. It's only good for consumers."

bdcravens3• 9 years ago

More interesting is the HN (and elsewhere) crowd that never relents on Google apologetics, yet presumably would be (and among those older, were) among the Microsoft critics.

flukus• 9 years ago

Microsoft: "An OS should include everything. Third party apps aren't needed. It's only good for consumers."

What? MS was all about third party apps and encouraged the vendor lock in they provided. Windows was absolutely spartan compared to what you'd get with a linux distro at the time.

I know the included certain apps that were contentious, like a browser, but Balmer wasn't kidding when he made that "dvelopers, developers, developers" speech.

guessbest• 9 years ago

For me Google is the best search on technical issues and research. When it comes down to touchy political and social issues, Bing and DuckDuckGo beat Google every time. In fact I don't even use Google to look up things I see in the news. It is always skewed. I completely avoid Google News.

millisecond• 9 years ago

Honest question, how is it skewed? Not a fan of google news myself for other reasons but never felt they forced a PoV.

annexrichmond3• 9 years ago

Google is doing what is best for it's customers

except it has been shown that the organic search results rank Yelp listings higher than Google's Local listings thus they are, in fact, displaying worse results at the top. Unless you believe Google's search product sucks I think this proves they aren't doing what's best for customers at all, they are doing what's best for them.

Keep in mind they are trying to develop Google Maps into a social review platform where you can write reviews, order delivery, etc. that seems similar to Yelp. Is it not clear they are using their Search monopoly to get more content on their own, currently worse, local reviews platform to have it become more dominant in the long run?

themacguffinman4• 9 years ago

Except if you look at the screenshot in Stoppelman's tweet, it's clear that Google's Local listings are displayed as advertisements. The Local section is unambiguously tagged as "Sponsored". Yelp and Local rankings aren't comparable.

Unless you think Google shouldn't be allowed to run their own advertising systems?

nashashmi2• 9 years ago

I like Google too. And I like the search engine returning products if it thinks they are relevant. But the issue behind EU commission was that they found Google purposely lower the ranks of relevant competitor's results nearly off the front page without merit.

The typical argument is that Google can do that because it is their search agent. But they did not express it explicitly in their terms of service.

quadrangle4• 9 years ago

It's not about whether a monopoly is fair or "unfair", it's about whether it provides power that they can abuse and is thus worse for the public interest.

Google got their monopoly fairly enough, maintain it through a mix of fair and questionable practices, and definitely uses their monopoly now in ways that are anti-competitive.

vadym909• 9 years ago

Whoah. Hold on. The problem is not with Google offering a Review service for HVAC companies. If the Google reviews are more comprehensive and valuable than Yelp- by all means have them show up in the organic listings- for that matter even use up your own budget to take up the sponsored space. But don't pretend that you've now got a new feature as part of search (taking up the sponsored box as a legal maneuver) that offers a similar service like Yelp and that it is part of your Google Search service. That is PURE EVIL.

georgeecollins• 9 years ago

The problem is that Google does what customers want selectively. For example, I don't think I want my search results to be as dominated by ads as they are today.

Once the competition is beaten, they may change their priorities from giving the customer and the partners what they want, to doing what is best for Google. Compare youtube of five years ago to now. There are many more ads and many more restrictions on how partners can place ads. If youtube had started with those rules and that much advertising I think it would have been less successful.

There is a pattern for all internet companies where they say to users and partners: look how great our platform is. And then when they achieve dominance they change the rules. The best protection is competition.

appleflaxen• 9 years ago

I don't see that Google has an unfair monopoly.

really? isn't the use of their search engine to squelch competition in local reviews support that they are a monopoly?

home_boi2• 9 years ago

What I find troubling about Yelp's arguments and the antitrust situation is that these parties are basically telling a company what its website must look like and have.

They are saying that a website must conform to their idea of a search page which contains only plain text search results.

kefka4• 9 years ago

Indeed, Google is too big and has a massive effect on the Internet across the whole world. A single capricious decision made by Google/Alphabet can cause dozens of businesses to shutter or fail. And that is a big problem, especially if we care about upstarts and new companies.

However, that responsibility they fail to take in consideration except by lawsuit, does not counteract YELP's BaaS - Blackmail as a Service. They have been known to, time and again, to shake down companies as local as mom-and-pop restaurants and other "juicy" targets. If YELP were to die today, we would be better off. They are the broken window in the Broken Window Theory of economics, and exact their damage by "Oh no, someone else wrote bad things about you - Pay us and they'll go away".

The courts ruled incorrectly about their doings. They should have been ordered to cease and desist. Or owners should be able to order them to bring down their respective reviews. Perhaps impartial review sites have a good reason to exist, but Yelp has shown that if you don't pay their protection money, you get all the bad ratings put forth and all the good ones 'disappear'.

Blackmail as a Service. As founded by the Better Business Bureau, and continued by Yelp.

(Edit: Evidently, I struck a chord that people don't like. I'd prefer that people rebut me instead of -1's that mean effectively nothing other than "shut up". )

ClassyJacket2• 9 years ago

You're absolutely right. Yelp adds no value the dozens of other review apps don't, they simply succed because they extort and blackmail small businesses. I refuse to install their app and the quicker they die the better.

keymone4• 9 years ago

they extort and blackmail small businesses

do you have any evidence of this?

keymone4• 9 years ago

have been known to, time and again, to shake down companies

do you have any evidence of this?

kefka4• 9 years ago

http://nypost.com/2014/10/13/restaurant-fights-yelps-alleged...

Restaurant tells everyone to leave bad ratings, because good ratings are hidden since they didn't pay extortion.

-----------------------------

https://www.reddit.com/r/food/comments/zdq0f/yelp_is_blackma...

Yelp "makes 4-5 star reviews go away" when restaurant refuses to pay extortion.

-----------------------------

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/inside-yelps-blackmail-lawsuit-c...

Stoppelman says that businesses want to control their reputation, and Yelp's position is to charge for that. Question here is, if money means hiding bad reviews, is that extortion? Sure seems so.

-----------------------------

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericgoldman/2014/09/03/court-sa...

The courts said that "Pay to Play" isn't strictly extortion. And claims that Yelp themselves wrote bad reviews were unsubstantiated (no proof, server logs can be a 'tricksy' thing....).

-----------------------------

https://www.cnet.com/news/to-mock-yelp-restaurant-asks-custo...

This has gotten bad enough, that businesses are telling customers to seed YELP with good "Bad reviews".

-----------------------------

Seriously, when they call, and you fail to pay, your page on YELP goes to the toilet. How much "proof" do you need? There seems to be a misdirection by blaming 3rd party customers, but seriously. They're using blackmail as their market strategy.

saurik• 9 years ago

However, that responsibility they fail to take in consideration except by lawsuit, does not counteract YELP's BaaS - Blackmail as a Service.

...and that you have reason to dislike Yelp or even think they are hypocritical does not counteract the problem with Google, which is the topic at hand, making your comment seem like nothing more than a defense of vigilanteism :/.

kefka4• 9 years ago

I would accept the accusation of defense of vigilantism, but I only highlighted the issue. I see it as a "Pot calls Kettle Black", but I do not advocate a response, other than that the courts handled it incorrectly.

I can have fault with both Google/Alphabet and Yelp. They each can have their own form of hypocrisy and potentially illegal behaviors. Me calling one out doesn't lessen the other's actions.

dang• 9 years ago

You've behaved so atrociously in this thread—with personal attacks, rants, and other violations of HN's guidelines—that you managed to sacrifice whatever high ground you began from and end up well in the hole. It's dismaying to see how much damage a single commenter on tilt can do.

We ban people for this kind of thing, so please don't do it again. Civil and substantive comments only (or no comments) from now on, please.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14697996 and marked it off-topic.

sunstone• 9 years ago

As a regular netizen I just don't trust Yelp. I'll use any other reputation service before them.

kailuowang• 9 years ago

I found that Yelp's reviews very unreliable. My business owner friends told me that they are constantly harassed by yelp's sales representatives to buy the right to "clean up" their reviews. I don't see how yelp can continue trash their brand like this and blaming Google for their low performance.

bhldr2• 9 years ago

Cleaning up reviews is actually not a Yelp feature. Paid or unpaid.

criddell4• 9 years ago

It seems to be a sales tactic though.

JCzynski3• 9 years ago

False. Squelching reviews that are "not relevant" or otherwise flagged, making them not show up unless the list of reviews is expanded to include the described-as-low-quality reviews, and IIRC not being included in the star-rating calculation, is SOP at Yelp.

It's done algorithmically by default, but there are people whose job it is to track places where the algorithms have gone wrong, and while ostensibly their latitude for independent decision is narrow it's actually pretty broad. Also that set of decisions is kept in a separate DB most programmers can't view or interact with, but which the customer support team could easily point the flaggers to.

Source: Worked there briefly.

dep_b3• 9 years ago

Their complaint is still just.

annexrichmond3• 9 years ago

I found that Yelp's reviews very unreliable.

followed by hearsay about your friends who told you about what a Yelp sales rep said.

How is this an argument for Google's business practices?

secabeen• 9 years ago

If these businesses are "constantly harassed" why has there never been published a recording of these harassing calls? There are 38 states in which either party can record a call without the consent of the other party.

tuxxy• 9 years ago

There's a bar nearby that has a "People Hate Us On Yelp!" sticker. I ran into the owner there one day and I asked him about it and he claimed that he immediately got it after the third or fourth call from the Yelp sales reps about cleaning up their reviews.

From then on, he started telling people to give bad reviews of the bar. It's not like it matters, it's a very popular bar.

bitmapbrother• 9 years ago

It doesn't get much more despicable than Yelp. They've been threatening and extorting small businesses for years. There's an upcoming documentary film that exposes them for who they truly are.

Billion Dollar Bully is an investigative documentary that examines allegations against Yelp regarding extortion, review manipulation, and review fabrication.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2dkJctUDIs

quadrangle4• 9 years ago

Sure, but a despicable company may still have legitimate complaints about other companies.

dep_b3• 9 years ago

The problem is that there's Google the search engine and Google the answer engine. They should split off the answer engine part into something completely new, based on Google search results but with the decoration they like to add and they think is the reason people love to use Google. Including integration into your mail, private thoughts, everything. Give that to the people who love it. Integrate it with Android and some kind of voice device in your living room. Experience this and that.

Google.com should go back to a search box, two buttons, three ads and ten results per page. No content mix, just pure results. Honest search, only external results. No abuse of monopoly.

valuearb2• 9 years ago

Summary: a scummy company like Yelp pays to influence regulators in order to force one of their competitors to change their product to be less consumer friendly and to better feature Yelp.

bsder• 9 years ago

I wish this were any company other than Yelp pushing things.

Yelp is sufficiently slimy in and unto themselves that it hurts their case.

naskwo• 9 years ago

2 cents here:

My background: I co-founded the largest online dating site in the Netherlands (sold to Match) as well as the largest housing platform (15 years before Airbnb :-). We leveraged the rise of Google to our advantage and the brands are still #1 in the Netherlands.

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Aside: Google raised the bar for the Internet. Heck, for the world. I think their offering is orders of magnitude better than the Excite, Lycos and AltaVista days, and the no-nonsense UI allows for a purer form if of information consumption.

A day without Facebook is a productive day. A day without Google is a day lost.

Where Google is like water to the Internet, Facebook is like a sugary softdrink. Enticing, but unhealthy with no nutritional content.

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Google is the de-facto search on the Internet. This is reflected in their valuation, as well as the fact that to "google" something is now a verb written in lowercase.

As a result, Google is the lens through which the world finds its information.

Being in this position also implies that Google should be regulated to block advertisers (and Google) from using third party trademarks as keywords:

It has irked me for many years that Google can sell advertising to companies for keywords that are trademarks this advertiser does not own. E.g. Adidas showing up when searching for Nike. It's nothing short of extortion that I would be forced to bid up bidding on _my own trademark_.

Here is Google's policy: https://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/answer/6118?hl=en

It seems a trivial matter to me to query the USPTO and the EU database to make sure that any AdWords show up below the organic search results for the valid trademark owner (as verified inside AdWords).

In this case, Yelp is a trademark, and Google's own product should show up _below_ Yelp's trademark. Otherwise, I don't see how this could be interpreted other than abuse of market monopoly.

zebraflask• 9 years ago

The thing with Yelp is that the negative reviews usually have a grain a truth to them.

I think they should pivot into an Internet complaints department.

ben_utzer• 9 years ago

yelp and tripadvisor basically destroyed the usage of "site:.XX" on google. Now every time I want to look for information on a specific country, I have to skip the first 2-4 results because they are almost "spam"

Yelp’s Six-Year Conflict with Google

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