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> Moving forward, I question whether these types of suspensions should be allowed from the tech giants without any oversight or regulation. At what point does a
by vertis 4y ago
> Moving forward, I question whether these types of suspensions should be allowed from the tech giants without any oversight or regulation. At what point does a company become pervasive enough in everyday life that they owe users an explanation or warning before dropping the guillotine? Or is this all part of an ongoing trend, toward something like the Chinese Social Credit Score system, where the consequences of not maintaining a high rating are socially crippling?
I'm starting to feel very strongly about this. Not just about AirBnB but about every part where tech is pervasive that it becomes a monopoly (or close to it).
There has to be some balance between keeping malicious actors off the platform and the responsibility to not fuck peoples lives up (AirBnB is far from the worst offender).
Examples: Ebay & Etsy that people run microbusinesses on. Google locking people out of email with no ability to recover. Paypal freezing money indefinitely. The list goes on.
I live my life out of AirBnBs (and to a lesser extent booking.com -> aparthotels) and have had the complete gamut of hosts and properties. Losing access to AirBnB would be problematic to say the least.
- amelius 4y agoWhile this is problematic, in my opinion it is far more problematic that we see so little competition. The reason is not that these companies do something that other companies can't do. For example AirBnB is just a CRUD database with a website that connects demand and supply. Anybody could build it, I bet some HNers even in a weekend :) So there must be anticompetitive practices going on. Or consumers are lazy and only visit the company that has the most offerings, thereby creating a vicious cycle.
- smallerfish 4y ago> For example AirBnB is just a CRUD database with a website that connects demand and supply. Anybody could build it, I bet some HNers even in a weekend :) The value is in the data, not the software. They have hundreds of thousands of properties on their platform ready to accept bookings - that takes a lot of legwork to produce. Same thing for Uber. You could build it and start rolling it out locally in your town, but do you think a) you could convince a solid number of hosts to use your platform, and b) that people visiting your town would use your (unknown) platform rather than the "safe bets" of airbnb or vrbo? If you can solve those problems, go for it; once you conquer your first locale, hire some salespeople and expand to the next geography.
- amelius 4y agoI would say the value is in the users, not necessarily the data. Win over the users, and you have the data as well. So basically network effects. I was thinking more at the level of the economy. How can we fix this nasty bug in the free market so the best service wins, not the one with the most users?
- lotsofpulp 4y agoLet people have the experiences that OP did, and they will automatically start to rent from other sellers/middlemen.
- smallerfish 4y agoI guess I could have said "the database". I think we're talking about the same thing. Without (some) users you won't get many listings; without enough listings you won't grow users organically. So, you need money to grow through GTM of some sort, and/or a really good organic growth strategy.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoThere seems to be a lot of competition. VRBO, Priceline, Expedia, Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt, IHG, choice, Wyndham, etc Edit: VRBO should be removed from above list since Expedia owns it.
- amelius 4y agoThose fall under Booking.com, for all that the consumer cares.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoNo, they do not. Priceline owns booking.com. And Priceline does not own any of the hotels or the hotel brands I listed. A ban by Priceline does not stop you from staying at any hotel. I did get VRBO wrong though, they should have been omitted since they are owned by Expedia.
- amelius 4y agoAirBnB and Booking.com are competitors at the platform level. Thousands of hotels and AirBnB hosts etc. are one level below and compete in a different market.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoI do not see the need to differentiate the markets in the internet era. Any seller who wants to rent temporary accommodations can throw up a website, and any renter can search it, via multiple search engines, maps, or accommodation listings. Perhaps for casual sellers looking to earn rental income on a part time basis, their only two options of easily reaching many people are Airbnb and Priceline (booking.com), but I am not sure how much of society’s concern that should be.
- amelius 4y ago> Any seller who wants to rent temporary accommodations can throw up a website, and any renter can search it, via multiple search engines, maps, or accommodation listings. The problem is that for most people, airbnb.com is the search engine.
- snowwrestler 4y agoAirBnB built their software pretty fast too. But then they had to literally fly around the country onboarding their first listings by hand: helping the property owners take good pictures, write enticing descriptions, etc. Scaling a two-sided market app is hard. You have to carefully increase the number of sellers and buyers together. If it gets too lopsided in either direction, people get frustrated and give up. AirBnB, like Uber, also benefited from a bunch of earned media because the idea seemed novel at the time. Reporters were interested in the concept. These days a competitor would need to spend like crazy on paid media to grow mindshare, or have some new twist that interests reporters.