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Just having a review site is missing the big picture. People want authenticity and trusted reviews. Google doesn't know if you really bought the Amazon item, bo

• geofft 7y ago
  Do TripAdvisor or Yelp know if I really visited that restaurant or that hotel? Does Quora or StackOverflow know if I really worked on that project or studied that subject? Clearly, there's widespread public internet in reviews without the automated verification. And if you want it, Google sees most credit card transactions. In 2017, they said, "Google’s third-party partnerships ... capture approximately 70% of credit and debit card transactions in the United States." https://adwords.googleblog.com/2017/05/powering-ads-and-analytics-innovations.html https://adwords.googleblog.com/2017/05/powering-ads-and-anal... (Later reporting found a deal with MasterCard, at least.) So they could absolutely know if you bought the Amazon item or booked the hotel, if they wanted. I wholeheartedly agree that there's a centralization concern about letting one company have so much power, but that doesn't change that there doesn't seem to be much advantage in another party being the review aggregator. If we can't figure out how to return control to the actual reviewers, Google is no worse of an aggregator.