10 ms·

Yelp’s Six-Year Conflict with Google

138 points by gaplus 9y ago

quickben 9y ago
I'm under the impression that only EU slaps antitrust charges lately.
- Fej 9y ago
  Which is a shame. I doubt any real antitrust cases will be brought here in the US for the next 4 years.
  - kefka 9y 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.
    - coredog64 9y ago
      Medicare doesn't cut out the private insurance companies either. If you have 'Medicare Advantage', the Feds are subsidizing your private insurance premium. If you have regular Medicare, the Feds are paying one of a handful of private insurance companies to manage your account. It has been this way for quite some time now.
- valuearb 9y ago
  Apparently only if you buy an elephant for one of their regulators.
- nostromo 9y ago
  It seems political. The EU is taking on a lot of US companies with antitrust complaints but few EU companies.
  - ocdtrekkie 9y 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.
  - ionised 9y 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 9y 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.
- x0x0 9y 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 9y 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.
    - jimmywanger 9y ago
      I believe Zappos treats its CSRs fairly well, considering they are considered the backbone of the company. However, this is secondhand, gleaned from several books and articles I've read.
  - jimmywanger 9y ago
    I've read her article. (https://medium.com/@taliajane/an-open-letter-to-my-ceo-fb73df021e7a 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.
it_learnses 9y ago
"Jeremy Stoppelman @jeremys Wow Google, congrats on a new low. Consumer searches for Yelp gets "reviews" which are Google Ads." hah, that's fresh coming from an online racketeering company.
- falsedan 9y ago
  I think the point was, you can choose not to use Yelp and your life will fine and dandy; not so much with google.
  - benchaney 9y ago
    The opposite is actually true. If you are being slandered on yelp you cannot just choose for it to end. On the other hand you can use another search engine or advertising firm without any problems.
    - falsedan 9y ago
      I don’t get it: which search engines?
      - benchaney 9y ago
        Bing, Yahoo, or Duck Duck Go.
        falsedan 9y ago
        Two of those are licensees of the other one. The power move was: Baidu/Yandex.
    - IncRnd 9y ago
      I'd refine that just a little. The users of Google are the advertisers. The people who search with Google are the product.
      - 9y ago
jszymborski 9y 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!".
- ocdtrekkie 9y 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 9y 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 9y 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.
  - nradov 9y ago
    I can't tell whether you're being sarcastic? Several car companies operating today were founded after 1920.
    - falsedan 9y ago
      Who owns them now?
    - erk__ 9y ago
      You are right it would be more precise to say after 1948. There is only one company in the 10 biggest companies that got founded after 48.
mrunkel 9y 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.
- appleflaxen 9y 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?
- mdasen 9y 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.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
home_boi 9y 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.
kefka 9y 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". )
- ClassyJacket 9y 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.
  - keymone 9y ago
    > they extort and blackmail small businesses do you have any evidence of this?
    - kefka 9y ago
      (This post is copied so others can see this. Tl;Dr. User [keymone] is a developer at YELP. ) You've been consistently a bad actor here, regarding Yelp. So, I searched google with "keymone yelp" (keymone is the HN username), and found the following: https://github.com/keymone https://github.com/keymone [Name Removed] Yelp Hamburg, Germany http://www.yelp.com http://www.yelp.com Organizations @Yelp Hmm...... Uusally people with direct interests (like yourself), will properly disclaim (I WORK FOR X, BUT NOT THEIR OPINIONS). _________________________________ https://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=1zHW3SSTF3RFjHkgHzRQvw https://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=1zHW3SSTF3RFjHkgHzR... Same pic as the Github profile. Certainly not a coincidence. _________________________________ https://twitter.com/keymone https://twitter.com/keymone Again, this says "happy developer" at Yelp.com _________________________________ Yeah, I'd suggest if you were to play the devil's advocate, I would properly disclaim that "[You] work at Yelp as a developer" instead of me playing guessing games and finally google your name and see dozens of profiles with the same Skiing pic. Frankly, you prove more of what I'm saying. So, tell me. How many proxies do you use when you seed bad reviews for companies that don't pay up? Because already, what you're doing is SHADY SHIT.
sunstone 9y ago
As a regular netizen I just don't trust Yelp. I'll use any other reputation service before them.
kailuowang 9y 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.
- bhldr 9y ago
  Cleaning up reviews is actually not a Yelp feature. Paid or unpaid.
  - criddell 9y ago
    It seems to be a sales tactic though.
  - JCzynski 9y 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_b 9y ago
  Their complaint is still just.
- annexrichmond 9y 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?
  - deleted 9y ago
bitmapbrother 9y 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2dkJctUDIs
- quadrangle 9y ago
  Sure, but a despicable company may still have legitimate complaints about other companies.
dep_b 9y 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.
valuearb 9y 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.
kefka 9y ago
You want to see how scummy AND scammy Yelp is? Look no further than further up the thread with HN:keymone responding to me, dismissing how Yelp is an extortionist. Oh yeah, keymone WORKS AT yelp. Probably as paid developer and proxied user to post bad posts for businesses that don't pay up. Extortion costs a bit, but pulls in dividends, I guess. Post below is my response, and proof of said user. And just... damn. ___________________________________________ You've been consistently a bad actor here, regarding Yelp. So, I searched google with "keymone yelp" (keymone is the HN username), and found the following: https://github.com/keymone https://github.com/keymone [Name Removed] Yelp Hamburg, Germany http://www.yelp.com http://www.yelp.com Organizations @Yelp Hmm...... Uusally people with direct interests (like yourself), will properly disclaim (I WORK FOR X, BUT NOT THEIR OPINIONS). _________________________________ https://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=1zHW3SSTF3RFjHkgHzRQvw https://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=1zHW3SSTF3RFjHkgHzR... Same pic as the Github profile. Certainly not a coincidence. _________________________________ https://twitter.com/keymone https://twitter.com/keymone Again, this says "happy developer" at Yelp.com _________________________________ Yeah, I'd suggest if you were to play the devil's advocate, I would properly disclaim that "[You] work at Yelp as a developer" instead of me playing guessing games and finally google your name and see dozens of profiles with the same Skiing pic. Frankly, you prove more of what I'm saying. So, tell me. How many proxies do you use when you seed bad reviews for companies that don't pay up? Because already, what you're doing is SHADY SHIT.
- dang 9y ago
  We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14698925 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14698925 and marked it off-topic.
kefka 9y ago
You wanna see how scammy and nasty YELP is? Look further down and see my criticism of Google and Yelp, and who responds. User [keymone] criticizes my choices at going against Yelp... And here's what I found out. Usually, Googlers will say "I'm a googler but this is my opinion." Well, we get no such disclaimer. And wouldn't ya know. Yelp engineer. So you wonder whom I consider more scammy? Yeah. Yelp. Good job, proving my point. ____________________________ You've been consistently a bad actor here, regarding Yelp. So, I searched google with "keymone yelp" (keymone is the HN username), and found the following: https://github.com/keymone https://github.com/keymone [Name Removed] Yelp Hamburg, Germany http://www.yelp.com http://www.yelp.com Organizations @Yelp Hmm...... Uusally people with direct interests (like yourself), will properly disclaim (I WORK FOR X, BUT NOT THEIR OPINIONS). _________________________________ https://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=1zHW3SSTF3RFjHkgHzRQvw https://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=1zHW3SSTF3RFjHkgHzR... Same pic as the Github profile. Certainly not a coincidence. _________________________________ https://twitter.com/keymone https://twitter.com/keymone Again, this says "happy developer" at Yelp.com _________________________________ Yeah, I'd suggest if you were to play the devil's advocate, I would properly disclaim that "[You] work at Yelp as a developer" instead of me playing guessing games and finally google your name and see dozens of profiles with the same Skiing pic. Frankly, you prove more of what I'm saying. So, tell me. How many proxies do you use when you seed bad reviews for companies that don't pay up? Because already, what you're doing is SHADY SHIT.
- WillPostForFood 9y ago
  I'd say calling out some random yelp dev for bad yelp reviews is even more shady. Why don't you tell use your real name and what company you work for now?
- mhermher 9y ago
  This is doxxing. Stop. This should be removed.
  - kefka 9y ago
    Doxxing? Not hardly. I typed in someone's username with "yelp" into google. Any hiring manager does that with prospective employees - why is it now verboten (and doxxing) to do with with usernames? No matter. I do believe his real name was probably unjustified. So I did redact his real name on all my posts. But I know it's available with that photo on Google's first page results. Still, it DOES NOT change that an engineer for the firm was acting as a first line of defense on HN. And yes, I was right in that he should have disclosed it.. Cause it sure as hell looks like a corporate sockpuppet.
bsder 9y 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 9y 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. === 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. === 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 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 9y 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 9y 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"

138 points by gaplus 9y ago

quickben 9y ago

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

Fej 9y ago
Which is a shame. I doubt any real antitrust cases will be brought here in the US for the next 4 years.
- kefka 9y 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.
  - coredog64 9y ago
    Medicare doesn't cut out the private insurance companies either. If you have 'Medicare Advantage', the Feds are subsidizing your private insurance premium. If you have regular Medicare, the Feds are paying one of a handful of private insurance companies to manage your account. It has been this way for quite some time now.
valuearb 9y ago
Apparently only if you buy an elephant for one of their regulators.
nostromo 9y ago
It seems political. The EU is taking on a lot of US companies with antitrust complaints but few EU companies.
- ocdtrekkie 9y 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.
- ionised 9y 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 9y 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.

x0x0 9y 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 9y 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.
  - jimmywanger 9y ago
    I believe Zappos treats its CSRs fairly well, considering they are considered the backbone of the company. However, this is secondhand, gleaned from several books and articles I've read.
- jimmywanger 9y ago
  I've read her article. (https://medium.com/@taliajane/an-open-letter-to-my-ceo-fb73df021e7a 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.

it_learnses 9y ago

"Jeremy Stoppelman @jeremys Wow Google, congrats on a new low. Consumer searches for Yelp gets "reviews" which are Google Ads." hah, that's fresh coming from an online racketeering company.

falsedan 9y ago
I think the point was, you can choose not to use Yelp and your life will fine and dandy; not so much with google.
- benchaney 9y ago
  The opposite is actually true. If you are being slandered on yelp you cannot just choose for it to end. On the other hand you can use another search engine or advertising firm without any problems.
  - falsedan 9y ago
    I don’t get it: which search engines?
    - benchaney 9y ago
      Bing, Yahoo, or Duck Duck Go.
      - falsedan 9y ago
        Two of those are licensees of the other one. The power move was: Baidu/Yandex.
  - IncRnd 9y ago
    I'd refine that just a little. The users of Google are the advertisers. The people who search with Google are the product.
    - 9y ago

jszymborski 9y 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!".

ocdtrekkie 9y 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 9y 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 9y 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.
- nradov 9y ago
  I can't tell whether you're being sarcastic? Several car companies operating today were founded after 1920.
  - falsedan 9y ago
    Who owns them now?
  - erk__ 9y ago
    You are right it would be more precise to say after 1948. There is only one company in the 10 biggest companies that got founded after 48.

mrunkel 9y 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.

appleflaxen 9y 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?
mdasen 9y 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.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

home_boi 9y 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.

kefka 9y 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". )

ClassyJacket 9y 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.
- keymone 9y ago
  > they extort and blackmail small businesses do you have any evidence of this?
  - kefka 9y ago
    (This post is copied so others can see this. Tl;Dr. User [keymone] is a developer at YELP. ) You've been consistently a bad actor here, regarding Yelp. So, I searched google with "keymone yelp" (keymone is the HN username), and found the following: https://github.com/keymone https://github.com/keymone [Name Removed] Yelp Hamburg, Germany http://www.yelp.com http://www.yelp.com Organizations @Yelp Hmm...... Uusally people with direct interests (like yourself), will properly disclaim (I WORK FOR X, BUT NOT THEIR OPINIONS). _________________________________ https://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=1zHW3SSTF3RFjHkgHzRQvw https://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=1zHW3SSTF3RFjHkgHzR... Same pic as the Github profile. Certainly not a coincidence. _________________________________ https://twitter.com/keymone https://twitter.com/keymone Again, this says "happy developer" at Yelp.com _________________________________ Yeah, I'd suggest if you were to play the devil's advocate, I would properly disclaim that "[You] work at Yelp as a developer" instead of me playing guessing games and finally google your name and see dozens of profiles with the same Skiing pic. Frankly, you prove more of what I'm saying. So, tell me. How many proxies do you use when you seed bad reviews for companies that don't pay up? Because already, what you're doing is SHADY SHIT.

sunstone 9y ago

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

kailuowang 9y 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.

bhldr 9y ago
Cleaning up reviews is actually not a Yelp feature. Paid or unpaid.
- criddell 9y ago
  It seems to be a sales tactic though.
- JCzynski 9y 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_b 9y ago
Their complaint is still just.
annexrichmond 9y 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?
- deleted 9y ago

bitmapbrother 9y 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2dkJctUDIs

quadrangle 9y ago
Sure, but a despicable company may still have legitimate complaints about other companies.

dep_b 9y 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.

valuearb 9y 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.

kefka 9y ago

You want to see how scummy AND scammy Yelp is? Look no further than further up the thread with HN:keymone responding to me, dismissing how Yelp is an extortionist. Oh yeah, keymone WORKS AT yelp. Probably as paid developer and proxied user to post bad posts for businesses that don't pay up. Extortion costs a bit, but pulls in dividends, I guess. Post below is my response, and proof of said user. And just... damn. ___________________________________________ You've been consistently a bad actor here, regarding Yelp. So, I searched google with "keymone yelp" (keymone is the HN username), and found the following: https://github.com/keymone https://github.com/keymone [Name Removed] Yelp Hamburg, Germany http://www.yelp.com http://www.yelp.com Organizations @Yelp Hmm...... Uusally people with direct interests (like yourself), will properly disclaim (I WORK FOR X, BUT NOT THEIR OPINIONS). _________________________________ https://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=1zHW3SSTF3RFjHkgHzRQvw https://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=1zHW3SSTF3RFjHkgHzR... Same pic as the Github profile. Certainly not a coincidence. _________________________________ https://twitter.com/keymone https://twitter.com/keymone Again, this says "happy developer" at Yelp.com _________________________________ Yeah, I'd suggest if you were to play the devil's advocate, I would properly disclaim that "[You] work at Yelp as a developer" instead of me playing guessing games and finally google your name and see dozens of profiles with the same Skiing pic. Frankly, you prove more of what I'm saying. So, tell me. How many proxies do you use when you seed bad reviews for companies that don't pay up? Because already, what you're doing is SHADY SHIT.

dang 9y ago
We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14698925 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14698925 and marked it off-topic.

kefka 9y ago

You wanna see how scammy and nasty YELP is? Look further down and see my criticism of Google and Yelp, and who responds. User [keymone] criticizes my choices at going against Yelp... And here's what I found out. Usually, Googlers will say "I'm a googler but this is my opinion." Well, we get no such disclaimer. And wouldn't ya know. Yelp engineer. So you wonder whom I consider more scammy? Yeah. Yelp. Good job, proving my point. ____________________________ You've been consistently a bad actor here, regarding Yelp. So, I searched google with "keymone yelp" (keymone is the HN username), and found the following: https://github.com/keymone https://github.com/keymone [Name Removed] Yelp Hamburg, Germany http://www.yelp.com http://www.yelp.com Organizations @Yelp Hmm...... Uusally people with direct interests (like yourself), will properly disclaim (I WORK FOR X, BUT NOT THEIR OPINIONS). _________________________________ https://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=1zHW3SSTF3RFjHkgHzRQvw https://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=1zHW3SSTF3RFjHkgHzR... Same pic as the Github profile. Certainly not a coincidence. _________________________________ https://twitter.com/keymone https://twitter.com/keymone Again, this says "happy developer" at Yelp.com _________________________________ Yeah, I'd suggest if you were to play the devil's advocate, I would properly disclaim that "[You] work at Yelp as a developer" instead of me playing guessing games and finally google your name and see dozens of profiles with the same Skiing pic. Frankly, you prove more of what I'm saying. So, tell me. How many proxies do you use when you seed bad reviews for companies that don't pay up? Because already, what you're doing is SHADY SHIT.

WillPostForFood 9y ago
I'd say calling out some random yelp dev for bad yelp reviews is even more shady. Why don't you tell use your real name and what company you work for now?
mhermher 9y ago
This is doxxing. Stop. This should be removed.
- kefka 9y ago
  Doxxing? Not hardly. I typed in someone's username with "yelp" into google. Any hiring manager does that with prospective employees - why is it now verboten (and doxxing) to do with with usernames? No matter. I do believe his real name was probably unjustified. So I did redact his real name on all my posts. But I know it's available with that photo on Google's first page results. Still, it DOES NOT change that an engineer for the firm was acting as a first line of defense on HN. And yes, I was right in that he should have disclosed it.. Cause it sure as hell looks like a corporate sockpuppet.

bsder 9y 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 9y 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. === 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. === 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 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 9y 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 9y 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"