4 ms·
If your business model is essentially extortion, you have to wonder about long-term viability.
by nasalgoat 8y ago
If your business model is essentially extortion, you have to wonder about long-term viability.
- vinceguidry 8y agoThe actual mob still seems to be doing well.
- nosequel 8y agoIs it? The NY and Boston mobs are pretty well dead these days.
- dsfyu404ed 8y agoThey've just pivoted into "legitimate" government. The middle bunch of the org chart of some government departments in MA is sprinkled with these people. Edit: some vs most. I can't speak for all of the departments.
- nasalgoat 8y agoThey have a diverse portfolio of crimes to work with. Always something new!
- wnevets 8y agothey've just moved to legit businesses.
- afterburner 8y agoThey used to be MUCH bigger.
- jessaustin 8y agoAdWords seems to be set for the foreseeable future. Before the inevitable protests, here's how it works. AdWords is quite willing to take money from Business A's competitor Business B for the precise phrase "Business A", as well as numerous other phrases that obviously refer to Business A. As a result, searches by naive mobile users for "Business A" will instead yield on-screen directions to "Business B". Business A will only find out about a small fraction of this traffic redirection, but it will still hurt them. In order to fix it, they only need to pay more money to AdWords than their competitors. That may be legal, but it is certainly extortion. [EDIT:] To return to the topic of Yelp, it may be that extortion works when you've got the muscle to enforce it. Google have that, but a site like Yelp where most of the traffic is coming from a search engine probably doesn't.