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Yelp is crying sour grapes here. There are so many ways they could have innovated to stay relevant but has anything changed in years there? They could have hi

Yelp is crying sour grapes here. There are so many ways they could have innovated to stay relevant but has anything changed in years there? They could have hired professional reviewers. Yelp reviews are notoriously bad. They could have let you choose what you prefer, example (quality vs quantity) and given you custom ratings or only included reviews from people that share similar tastes. Following up on the last idea They could have tried to auto cluster reviewers. (people who rated these 5 places as having good taste also liked ...) the could have scanned menus so you could ask "where can I get a pepperoni pizza at 3am" instead of at best being able to look up "pizza" and figure the rest out yourself. How about "where can I get a table for 10". How about partner with as many restaurants as possible so I can ask "who's still got a table for 4 for steak and win between 7 and 9pm tonight" And maybe nothing would save them but I at least for me reviews make sense on Google maps. That yelp couldn't see their audience was going to dry up seems no different than newspaper classifieds and Craigslist. Their quality certainly isn't better so ATM there is zero reason to go there.

camillomiller 8y ago
You might be right, but a company’s abuse of dominant position isn’t defined by the quality of their competitor’s offer.
- sunstone 8y ago
  Yelp has been horrible since day one. If google has or has not abused its position Yelp is not the standard we would use to determine that.
  - camillomiller 8y ago
    This makes no sense. Yelp could be the worst company ever created, but if they had market share and Google worked to seize that market with unfair practices, that counts as abuse of dominant position. There is a dangerous conflation of two very distinct categories in your line of thought.
    - Mirioron 8y ago
      The problem comes with the fact that it's possible to game algorithms. We have examples where a poor service or website becomes (remains) popular, because they're good at gaming the system. Eg Pinterest. Or in the case of the example they brought up in the video, where they counted the number of reviews you could game that system by just creating fake reviews or trying to just get more of them through non-organic ways.
      - dazc 8y ago
        'Eg Pinterest' A classic example of a business that Google should be using their dominance against, but aren't.
        madads 8y ago
        In a roundabout way Google are more like Pinterest than you think. Both utilising other people’s content. All just glorified databases with different UI really. Yelp kind of has original content in people’s opinion of db entries. YouTube however is slightly different since people post short and long form video on which is mostly original. Interesting.
        dazc 8y ago
        'In a roundabout way Google are more like Pinterest than you think. Both utilising other people’s content.' True, which makes me wonder why Google don't just add a bit of Pinterest-style functionality and then start applying search quality guidelines against Pinterest? I know there are copyright issues but I expect Google would do a better job of linking to the original source - something Pinterest seem unable to do at all?
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
    - obelix_ 8y ago
      If think the point being made is Amazon didn't suffer the same fate as Yelp wrt to book reviews because Amazon had a better product than whatever Google produced.
  - pwinnski 8y ago
    The enemy of my enemy is... still horrible.
- dazc 8y ago
  But, maybe, abusing a dominant position is a lot easier when the competitor's offer is so poor? For a lot of popular queries the results are dominated by paid directories, aggregators and such that offer no great value to consumers. Google's listings tend to be more accurate in terms of location and the reviews more reliable.
- dalbasal 8y ago
  You are right, at least in the traditional anti-trust-ish legal sense as I understand it. In a wider more pedestrian sense, there is a some kettle-pot-black involved here, at least in my opinion. Yelp's a little monopolistic middle man. Everyone reads and writes reviews on Yelp because everyone reads and writes reviews on Yelp. Market dominance today is the main ingredient for dominance tomorrow. Everyone uses Google search, maps, phones etc. Google gets all the data & ad revenue. They use this to maintain their dominance. Pick your euphemism for this position: momentum, network effects, buffet's moat, thiel's-monopoly, dominance, viral feedback loops.... Whatever you call it, a restaurant can't opt out of yelp, just like a website can't opt out of google. Their rules are the rules. There is no option B. A downstream company can be harmed when Google competes direct (AKA the terror of 2006), when they redirect traffic to alternative web pages or disrupts market dominance downstream, intentionally or otherwise. This is like Yelp's relationship with restaurants. Yelp can stop sending a restaurant customers. Google can stop sending Yelp users. There are no "market dynamics," no "invisible hands," price signals or whatnot. There is no "market" to impose discipline in the way the laissez-faire idealization does on paper. So... I'm kind of torn. I want to see far more complaints, cases & legislation targeting market dominance, size and monopoly. On the other hand, the hypocrisy...
  - andrepd 8y ago
    For what's worth, I never used Yelp in my life. I seem to only remember using Tripadvisor.
  - camillomiller 8y ago
    I agree that the matter is multi-faceted, of course. I just wanted to point out that we can't use a competing service's quality to assess whether market dominance was exerted or not. Neither I think it can be an extenuating factor. One isn't any less a murderer if they kill another murderer. Should a different case (maybe a class action) be brought against Yelp for abusing its position and momentum to force restaurants into joining the platform? Probably yes, but it would be a different case which, albeit rightful, has nothing to do with the Yelp-Google case.
    - 8y ago
- kinsomo 8y ago
  > You might be right, but a company’s abuse of dominant position isn’t defined by the quality of their competitor’s offer. And the assumption that Yelp's offer is of poorer quality is debatable. Google's own algorithm apparently often ranks its content lower than its competitors in organic search results. The second video shows this: they created proof-of-concept plugin that uses Google's own organic search results to power a clone of Google+ local: https://youtu.be/k9UqqmIJW4g https://youtu.be/k9UqqmIJW4g
djrobstep 8y ago
So one monopoly has been replaced by another. Bizarre to conclude from this that "the system works".
mozumder 8y ago
Google reviews are also pretty horrific as well. Completely untamed and unprofessional, by people that don't know anything about the subject.
- anilgulecha 8y ago
  Are these journal peer-reviews that I've missed? I don't know of any certificate courses that allows one to comment on the ambiance of a restaurant.
- nostalgeek 8y ago
  > Google reviews are also pretty horrific as well. Completely untamed and unprofessional, by people that don't know anything about the subject. I'm not sure what the problem is, in both cases reviews are crowd-sourced. So what level of professionalism are you expecting from websites where anybody can leave a review?
- dazc 8y ago
  I wouldn't say Google reviews are ideal but I've found them to be a lot more reliable than the alternative. For example, Booking.com, etc.
  - mijamo 8y ago
    Completely the opposite for me. At least booking.com allows reviews only when you booked. And when I read the comments most point out real problems or benefits of the different housings. AirBNB reviews on the other hand are painfully useless. And Google is the worst, with a shitload of review from people that look like that probably didn't even went to the place, or just disliked being denied on a discount of something, so you jget useless 5 stars review that say "best food ever" and 1 star reviews for "super rude server, worst restaurant ever" for the same average restaurant, and nothing in between to tell you what the place actually feels like or what food is good/bad there.
    - dazc 8y ago
      My experience is mainly limited to Hotels though and I've found 1 star reviews on Google tend to match my actual experience with bad hotels very closely. I am based in Europe though so maybe this isn't a universal experience?
grosjona 8y ago
Yelp never made sense. It's surprising that it got so big. It's obvious that Google maps was going to offer the same service as them and that Yelp would not stand a chance.
mratzloff 8y ago
Craigslist is terrible but people still use it. If Google entered that market and showed their own classified ads as search results above Craigslist's, would you say that "Craigslist couldn't see their audience was going to dry up"? At what point is it too much? Google wants to classify all the world's information—doesn't seem like there are many markets it wouldn't enter. Is every business just living on borrowed time because the Eye of Google hasn't swung toward them yet?
- dalbasal 8y ago
  This was a big scare 10-12 years ago. Google will eat the world. Whether you were selling an RSS client or giving away a social network, the fear was that Google could take your whole market sector. How? Google search is the way customers find you, initially and every time they want to log in. If they want to compet, all the customers already have google accounts and they're already logged in. Google has useful customer data: "you are in a restaurant now and often visit yelp, do you want to write a review?" Lean on 2 or 3 of these advantages, and Google can have a yelp-killer sketched out in an afternoon and built in a quarter. In reality, Google didn't really eat everything. The web was just too big. They also sucked at some stuff like new communication or social network paradigms (wave, plus hangouts). But, Google's bigger now. Theyve eaten most of the big dishes. Yelp might still be too small a snack, but... the point about dominance is true. Google have a lot of power. If they want into some web sector, they can just power through the marketing & chicken-egg problems that kill 92.6% of the competition.
- lithos 8y ago
  Craigslist is actually pretty good for some users. It works on a computer that is over 10 years old, it has minimum levels of moderation, and does a really good job of letting people interact/trade in their local areas.
  - mratzloff 8y ago
    The quality of the site is not the point. The point is whether or not Google abuses their market position. Whether Nixon bugging the Democratic office at The Watergate is a crime or not doesn't hinge on whether McGovern is a good candidate.
k_bx 8y ago
They could also launch worldwide.
soup10 8y ago
I’m bullish on yelp still, they have the highest quality community sourced reviews, a forward thinking engineering team, and energetic management. I think they will pull through and continue to be competitive with Google, but they need better marketing!
- jacksmith21006 8y ago
  Is there two Yelps?
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
jacksmith21006 8y ago
Watched the segment and completely agree. I was shocked this segment even made it on 60 minutes. It was just Yelp sour grapes and curious how it even made it on 60 minutes?
diogenescynic 8y ago
Yelp’s mobile website is also intentionally limited to force you to download the app (so they can mine your personal info). It’s infuriating. Not to mention the desktop website hasn’t changed meaningfully in years. Yelp is one of the least innovative companies and they manage to remain fairly dominant in their category. I really wish they had been replaced already.
moistoreos 8y ago
Going to have to agree with some caveats. Google's review system is pretty superb. But that doesn't mean they don't dominate this area. However, I feel like this is a space that could still use some innovation. I use Waze for navigation but for informational purposes I still use Maps. I would be, dare I say it, willing to subscribe to a cheap platform that would do both better.

camillomiller 8y ago

You might be right, but a company’s abuse of dominant position isn’t defined by the quality of their competitor’s offer.

sunstone 8y ago
Yelp has been horrible since day one. If google has or has not abused its position Yelp is not the standard we would use to determine that.
- camillomiller 8y ago
  This makes no sense. Yelp could be the worst company ever created, but if they had market share and Google worked to seize that market with unfair practices, that counts as abuse of dominant position. There is a dangerous conflation of two very distinct categories in your line of thought.
  - Mirioron 8y ago
    The problem comes with the fact that it's possible to game algorithms. We have examples where a poor service or website becomes (remains) popular, because they're good at gaming the system. Eg Pinterest. Or in the case of the example they brought up in the video, where they counted the number of reviews you could game that system by just creating fake reviews or trying to just get more of them through non-organic ways.
    - dazc 8y ago
      'Eg Pinterest' A classic example of a business that Google should be using their dominance against, but aren't.
      - madads 8y ago
        In a roundabout way Google are more like Pinterest than you think. Both utilising other people’s content. All just glorified databases with different UI really. Yelp kind of has original content in people’s opinion of db entries. YouTube however is slightly different since people post short and long form video on which is mostly original. Interesting.
        dazc 8y ago
        'In a roundabout way Google are more like Pinterest than you think. Both utilising other people’s content.' True, which makes me wonder why Google don't just add a bit of Pinterest-style functionality and then start applying search quality guidelines against Pinterest? I know there are copyright issues but I expect Google would do a better job of linking to the original source - something Pinterest seem unable to do at all?
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
  - obelix_ 8y ago
    If think the point being made is Amazon didn't suffer the same fate as Yelp wrt to book reviews because Amazon had a better product than whatever Google produced.
- pwinnski 8y ago
  The enemy of my enemy is... still horrible.
dazc 8y ago
But, maybe, abusing a dominant position is a lot easier when the competitor's offer is so poor? For a lot of popular queries the results are dominated by paid directories, aggregators and such that offer no great value to consumers. Google's listings tend to be more accurate in terms of location and the reviews more reliable.
dalbasal 8y ago
You are right, at least in the traditional anti-trust-ish legal sense as I understand it. In a wider more pedestrian sense, there is a some kettle-pot-black involved here, at least in my opinion. Yelp's a little monopolistic middle man. Everyone reads and writes reviews on Yelp because everyone reads and writes reviews on Yelp. Market dominance today is the main ingredient for dominance tomorrow. Everyone uses Google search, maps, phones etc. Google gets all the data & ad revenue. They use this to maintain their dominance. Pick your euphemism for this position: momentum, network effects, buffet's moat, thiel's-monopoly, dominance, viral feedback loops.... Whatever you call it, a restaurant can't opt out of yelp, just like a website can't opt out of google. Their rules are the rules. There is no option B. A downstream company can be harmed when Google competes direct (AKA the terror of 2006), when they redirect traffic to alternative web pages or disrupts market dominance downstream, intentionally or otherwise. This is like Yelp's relationship with restaurants. Yelp can stop sending a restaurant customers. Google can stop sending Yelp users. There are no "market dynamics," no "invisible hands," price signals or whatnot. There is no "market" to impose discipline in the way the laissez-faire idealization does on paper. So... I'm kind of torn. I want to see far more complaints, cases & legislation targeting market dominance, size and monopoly. On the other hand, the hypocrisy...
- andrepd 8y ago
  For what's worth, I never used Yelp in my life. I seem to only remember using Tripadvisor.
- camillomiller 8y ago
  I agree that the matter is multi-faceted, of course. I just wanted to point out that we can't use a competing service's quality to assess whether market dominance was exerted or not. Neither I think it can be an extenuating factor. One isn't any less a murderer if they kill another murderer. Should a different case (maybe a class action) be brought against Yelp for abusing its position and momentum to force restaurants into joining the platform? Probably yes, but it would be a different case which, albeit rightful, has nothing to do with the Yelp-Google case.
  - 8y ago
kinsomo 8y ago
> You might be right, but a company’s abuse of dominant position isn’t defined by the quality of their competitor’s offer. And the assumption that Yelp's offer is of poorer quality is debatable. Google's own algorithm apparently often ranks its content lower than its competitors in organic search results. The second video shows this: they created proof-of-concept plugin that uses Google's own organic search results to power a clone of Google+ local: https://youtu.be/k9UqqmIJW4g https://youtu.be/k9UqqmIJW4g

djrobstep 8y ago

So one monopoly has been replaced by another. Bizarre to conclude from this that "the system works".

mozumder 8y ago

Google reviews are also pretty horrific as well. Completely untamed and unprofessional, by people that don't know anything about the subject.

anilgulecha 8y ago
Are these journal peer-reviews that I've missed? I don't know of any certificate courses that allows one to comment on the ambiance of a restaurant.
nostalgeek 8y ago
> Google reviews are also pretty horrific as well. Completely untamed and unprofessional, by people that don't know anything about the subject. I'm not sure what the problem is, in both cases reviews are crowd-sourced. So what level of professionalism are you expecting from websites where anybody can leave a review?
dazc 8y ago
I wouldn't say Google reviews are ideal but I've found them to be a lot more reliable than the alternative. For example, Booking.com, etc.
- mijamo 8y ago
  Completely the opposite for me. At least booking.com allows reviews only when you booked. And when I read the comments most point out real problems or benefits of the different housings. AirBNB reviews on the other hand are painfully useless. And Google is the worst, with a shitload of review from people that look like that probably didn't even went to the place, or just disliked being denied on a discount of something, so you jget useless 5 stars review that say "best food ever" and 1 star reviews for "super rude server, worst restaurant ever" for the same average restaurant, and nothing in between to tell you what the place actually feels like or what food is good/bad there.
  - dazc 8y ago
    My experience is mainly limited to Hotels though and I've found 1 star reviews on Google tend to match my actual experience with bad hotels very closely. I am based in Europe though so maybe this isn't a universal experience?

grosjona 8y ago

Yelp never made sense. It's surprising that it got so big. It's obvious that Google maps was going to offer the same service as them and that Yelp would not stand a chance.

mratzloff 8y ago

Craigslist is terrible but people still use it. If Google entered that market and showed their own classified ads as search results above Craigslist's, would you say that "Craigslist couldn't see their audience was going to dry up"? At what point is it too much? Google wants to classify all the world's information—doesn't seem like there are many markets it wouldn't enter. Is every business just living on borrowed time because the Eye of Google hasn't swung toward them yet?

dalbasal 8y ago
This was a big scare 10-12 years ago. Google will eat the world. Whether you were selling an RSS client or giving away a social network, the fear was that Google could take your whole market sector. How? Google search is the way customers find you, initially and every time they want to log in. If they want to compet, all the customers already have google accounts and they're already logged in. Google has useful customer data: "you are in a restaurant now and often visit yelp, do you want to write a review?" Lean on 2 or 3 of these advantages, and Google can have a yelp-killer sketched out in an afternoon and built in a quarter. In reality, Google didn't really eat everything. The web was just too big. They also sucked at some stuff like new communication or social network paradigms (wave, plus hangouts). But, Google's bigger now. Theyve eaten most of the big dishes. Yelp might still be too small a snack, but... the point about dominance is true. Google have a lot of power. If they want into some web sector, they can just power through the marketing & chicken-egg problems that kill 92.6% of the competition.
lithos 8y ago
Craigslist is actually pretty good for some users. It works on a computer that is over 10 years old, it has minimum levels of moderation, and does a really good job of letting people interact/trade in their local areas.
- mratzloff 8y ago
  The quality of the site is not the point. The point is whether or not Google abuses their market position. Whether Nixon bugging the Democratic office at The Watergate is a crime or not doesn't hinge on whether McGovern is a good candidate.

k_bx 8y ago

They could also launch worldwide.

soup10 8y ago

I’m bullish on yelp still, they have the highest quality community sourced reviews, a forward thinking engineering team, and energetic management. I think they will pull through and continue to be competitive with Google, but they need better marketing!

jacksmith21006 8y ago
Is there two Yelps?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

jacksmith21006 8y ago

Watched the segment and completely agree. I was shocked this segment even made it on 60 minutes. It was just Yelp sour grapes and curious how it even made it on 60 minutes?

diogenescynic 8y ago

Yelp’s mobile website is also intentionally limited to force you to download the app (so they can mine your personal info). It’s infuriating. Not to mention the desktop website hasn’t changed meaningfully in years. Yelp is one of the least innovative companies and they manage to remain fairly dominant in their category. I really wish they had been replaced already.

moistoreos 8y ago

Going to have to agree with some caveats. Google's review system is pretty superb. But that doesn't mean they don't dominate this area. However, I feel like this is a space that could still use some innovation. I use Waze for navigation but for informational purposes I still use Maps. I would be, dare I say it, willing to subscribe to a cheap platform that would do both better.