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From a user of both services, and not a lawyer - Yelp has burned all benefit of the doubt by seemingly basing their business on deception. I find using Yelp to

From a user of both services, and not a lawyer - Yelp has burned all benefit of the doubt by seemingly basing their business on deception. I find using Yelp to be extremely difficult as I end up frequently reading an advertisement instead of a review despite double-checking first (!), I find myself locked out of Yelp content frequently (I have an account! Maybe I'm not signed in? Who knows? Or am I trying to use the website and not their app? etc). Yelp frequently leads users to believe they have information right in front of them when the user has no such thing. Given that this is the current state of affairs, and has been for years (always?) I would think Yelp would have exactly 0 credibility when it comes to them trying to make things "fair" in search results. Why should a society bend for Yelp when Yelp has done everything in their power to deceive us through poor UI, poor UX, misleading links, what I would even call false advertising? We shouldn't. -- Edit: As a point of comparison, on Google you know when you're reading a review and when you're seeing an ad right away, there's no confusion or deception or lies there.

IBM 8y ago
Substitute TripAdvisor or Expedia or any other business in a valuable vertical in place of Yelp and perhaps you can evaluate the antitrust case against Google with more objectivity.
lerchmo 8y ago
The app wall is extremely frustrating for me.
- choward 8y ago
  It makes no sense. Why do I need a separate app to view a web site? That's right. I don't. I always have to switch the the desktop version on my phone. They had to go out of their way to hinder their mobile web site and make it nag to install the app.
scarface74 8y ago
Edit: As a point of comparison, on Google you know when you're reading a review and when you're seeing an ad right away, there's no confusion or deception or lies there. https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/04/27/do-50-of-adults-really-not-recognise-ads-in-search-results/ https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/04/27/do-50-of-adults-rea...
ocdtrekkie 8y ago
Google used to highlight all of their ads in a separately colored box. Now, ads are marked by the word "Ad" in fairly tiny print, and the ad is formatted to look as identical as a real search result as possible. Google's entire search engine design is based around deceiving users into clicking on ads they thought were search results.

IBM 8y ago

Substitute TripAdvisor or Expedia or any other business in a valuable vertical in place of Yelp and perhaps you can evaluate the antitrust case against Google with more objectivity.

lerchmo 8y ago

The app wall is extremely frustrating for me.

choward 8y ago
It makes no sense. Why do I need a separate app to view a web site? That's right. I don't. I always have to switch the the desktop version on my phone. They had to go out of their way to hinder their mobile web site and make it nag to install the app.

scarface74 8y ago

Edit: As a point of comparison, on Google you know when you're reading a review and when you're seeing an ad right away, there's no confusion or deception or lies there. https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/04/27/do-50-of-adults-really-not-recognise-ads-in-search-results/ https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/04/27/do-50-of-adults-rea...

ocdtrekkie 8y ago

Google used to highlight all of their ads in a separately colored box. Now, ads are marked by the word "Ad" in fairly tiny print, and the ad is formatted to look as identical as a real search result as possible. Google's entire search engine design is based around deceiving users into clicking on ads they thought were search results.