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The best way to win is to open a restaurant with ridiculously high margins (over priced wine and cheap ingredients). That's a rather terrible example: a restau

The best way to win is to open a restaurant with ridiculously high margins (over priced wine and cheap ingredients). That's a rather terrible example: a restaurant that had over priced wine and cheap ingredients would fail miserably in short order, regardless of how many Google ad auctions they won. If you really want the cheapest car insurance, you need to find a company that doesn't advertise, and is non-profit I doubt those two traits have any measurable correlation with providing the cheapest car insurance, or any other service or business, just as it's possible that a company with rampant ads on every medium and high margins provides the best value.

chii 13y ago
> a restaurant that had over priced wine and cheap ingredients would fail miserably in short order, regardless of how many Google ad auctions they won. unless if there's so many restraurants, and the quality of wine is so subjective that most customers cannot really differentiate it. Then exposure is really the only thing a (time poor) customer can rely on, and thus, by massively spending on advertising, and not on ingredients, they can convert more paying customers than the small, but quality restaurant who nobody knows exists. I want some way to have word of mouth recommendations work over the net, without it being game-able. perhaps a system where you must pay (a very small token amount) to review?
- lmm 13y ago
  >I want some way to have word of mouth recommendations work over the net, without it being game-able. perhaps a system where you must pay (a very small token amount) to review? That would make it even more of a money arms race. Ultimately you want something like personal recommendations where people attach their own reputations to their recommendations; google is trying to push something on these lines with google+.
  - chii 13y ago
    but a person's reputation on the net is inherently non-existant, unless they're forced to use their real name, and is somewhat known/famous. Being able to create fake reviews and fake recommendations is the same problem as spam in email (cept spam is easier to filter out). If sending email costs the sender some token amount (say, 1cent per 1000 email), it would probably stop majority of spam, because it just became cost-ineffective. That was why i was suggesting paying token amount for writing reviews - tho i have no doubts there are flaws with that idea….
acdha 13y ago
> That's a rather terrible example: a restaurant that had over priced wine and cheap ingredients would fail miserably in short order Have you ever travelled? There are restaurants like that surrounding every airport, convention center, etc. because they know people will value convenience, speed of service, ability to handle large parties, etc. more than great food. The situation is similar near large office parks — it may be mediocre but it's the closest choice! — areas with lots of tourists or transient populations (how many college town date-night restaurants are great?), etc. Actually, it's even simpler: Applebee's does not appear to be disappearing.

chii 13y ago

> a restaurant that had over priced wine and cheap ingredients would fail miserably in short order, regardless of how many Google ad auctions they won. unless if there's so many restraurants, and the quality of wine is so subjective that most customers cannot really differentiate it. Then exposure is really the only thing a (time poor) customer can rely on, and thus, by massively spending on advertising, and not on ingredients, they can convert more paying customers than the small, but quality restaurant who nobody knows exists. I want some way to have word of mouth recommendations work over the net, without it being game-able. perhaps a system where you must pay (a very small token amount) to review?

lmm 13y ago
>I want some way to have word of mouth recommendations work over the net, without it being game-able. perhaps a system where you must pay (a very small token amount) to review? That would make it even more of a money arms race. Ultimately you want something like personal recommendations where people attach their own reputations to their recommendations; google is trying to push something on these lines with google+.
- chii 13y ago
  but a person's reputation on the net is inherently non-existant, unless they're forced to use their real name, and is somewhat known/famous. Being able to create fake reviews and fake recommendations is the same problem as spam in email (cept spam is easier to filter out). If sending email costs the sender some token amount (say, 1cent per 1000 email), it would probably stop majority of spam, because it just became cost-ineffective. That was why i was suggesting paying token amount for writing reviews - tho i have no doubts there are flaws with that idea….

acdha 13y ago

> That's a rather terrible example: a restaurant that had over priced wine and cheap ingredients would fail miserably in short order Have you ever travelled? There are restaurants like that surrounding every airport, convention center, etc. because they know people will value convenience, speed of service, ability to handle large parties, etc. more than great food. The situation is similar near large office parks — it may be mediocre but it's the closest choice! — areas with lots of tourists or transient populations (how many college town date-night restaurants are great?), etc. Actually, it's even simpler: Applebee's does not appear to be disappearing.