Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Yelp’s Six-Year Conflict with Google

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 198 posts

Re: Yelp’s Six-Year Conflict with Google

#101

Post by putlake »

nradov wrote: post #47
putlake wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. As a web publisher who depends on advertising for revenue and Google for traffic, things are getting more and more difficult. Google providing answers in the search box robs legitimate publishers of traffic. But the industry is so fragmented that a concerted legal action against Google is not possible. Since this is HN, I expect people are going to start chanting "Die you ad supported publishers or find a ne…

Web publishers have gotten lazy. Instead of becoming more dependant on Google and then complaining about being marginalized they should put more effort into marketing directly to their target audience and finding non-advertising revenue models.

Even when publishers have a good brand, it doesn't change user behavior. How often do users directly go to Wikipedia to look something up? Google search is integrated into Chrome, Android, Google Home. Google is a monopoly.

Yes, publishers should find non-advertising revenue models. Yes, they should find non-Google sources of traffic. But that's blaming the victim. The fact is that Google has started stealing more and more content from large and small publishers in order to keep the user from leaving Google. And it's not OK for a monopoly to do that.

Re: Yelp’s Six-Year Conflict with Google

#102

Post by benchaney »

IncRnd wrote: post #100
benchaney wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The opposite is actually true. If you are being slandered on yelp you cannot just choose for it to end. On the other hand you can use another search engine or advertising firm without any problems.

I'd refine that just a little. The users of Google are the advertisers. The people who search with Google are the product.

I'm not sure how this is relevant. As I said in the comment you are replying to, there are alternatives for both searching and advertising.

Re: Yelp’s Six-Year Conflict with Google

#103

Post by flukus »

euske wrote: post #61
mrunkel wrote: post #13

I find all this hand wringing over Google to be so tiring. Google is doing what is best for it's customers. Be that advertisers and/or searchers. If they stop doing that, they'll lose their market dominance. Last I checked, nobody is forced to use google to search for things, nobody if forced (except for perhaps android users) to use Chrome. I'm not a laissez-faire capitalist by any means, but I don't see that Google…

I find it amusing how their argument is similar to the MS' antitrust argument in 90s. Microsoft: "An OS should include everything. Third party apps aren't needed. It's only good for consumers." Google: "A search engine should include everything. Third party websites aren't needed. It's only good for consumers."

> Microsoft: "An OS should include everything. Third party apps aren't needed. It's only good for consumers."

What? MS was all about third party apps and encouraged the vendor lock in they provided. Windows was absolutely spartan compared to what you'd get with a linux distro at the time.

I know the included certain apps that were contentious, like a browser, but Balmer wasn't kidding when he made that "dvelopers, developers, developers" speech.

Re: Yelp’s Six-Year Conflict with Google

#104

Post by secabeen »

kailuowang wrote: post #45

I found that Yelp's reviews very unreliable. My business owner friends told me that they are constantly harassed by yelp's sales representatives to buy the right to "clean up" their reviews. I don't see how yelp can continue trash their brand like this and blaming Google for their low performance.

If these businesses are "constantly harassed" why has there never been published a recording of these harassing calls? There are 38 states in which either party can record a call without the consent of the other party.

Re: Yelp’s Six-Year Conflict with Google

#105

Post by loceng »

mdasen wrote: post #22
mrunkel wrote: post #13

I find all this hand wringing over Google to be so tiring. Google is doing what is best for it's customers. Be that advertisers and/or searchers. If they stop doing that, they'll lose their market dominance. Last I checked, nobody is forced to use google to search for things, nobody if forced (except for perhaps android users) to use Chrome. I'm not a laissez-faire capitalist by any means, but I don't see that Google…

> If they stop doing that, they'll lose their market dominance. That's precisely the issue. It can be illegal to use your market dominance in one area (search) to reinforce or create market dominance in other areas. Microsoft had the best operating system and a browser that they wanted people to use. People preferred Netscape, but Microsoft used its OS dominance to kill off Netscape. It is ok to be dominant in a prod…

Do you have any views on Facebook and their product line?

Re: Yelp’s Six-Year Conflict with Google

#106

Post by tuxxy »

kailuowang wrote: post #45

I found that Yelp's reviews very unreliable. My business owner friends told me that they are constantly harassed by yelp's sales representatives to buy the right to "clean up" their reviews. I don't see how yelp can continue trash their brand like this and blaming Google for their low performance.

There's a bar nearby that has a "People Hate Us On Yelp!" sticker. I ran into the owner there one day and I asked him about it and he claimed that he immediately got it after the third or fourth call from the Yelp sales reps about cleaning up their reviews.

From then on, he started telling people to give bad reviews of the bar. It's not like it matters, it's a very popular bar.

Re: Yelp’s Six-Year Conflict with Google

#107

Post by criddell »

bdcravens wrote: post #79
euske wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it amusing how their argument is similar to the MS' antitrust argument in 90s. Microsoft: "An OS should include everything. Third party apps aren't needed. It's only good for consumers." Google: "A search engine should include everything. Third party websites aren't needed. It's only good for consumers."

More interesting is the HN (and elsewhere) crowd that never relents on Google apologetics, yet presumably would be (and among those older, were) among the Microsoft critics.

You're describing me and it pretty much comes down to trust. I trust Google a lot more than I ever trusted Microsoft back when they were the bully.

Re: Yelp’s Six-Year Conflict with Google

#108

Post by manigandham »

x0x0 wrote: post #99
jimmywanger wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read her article. ( https://medium.com/@taliajane/an-open-letter-to-my-ceo-fb73d... ) It really has nothing substantive to say except "I'm struggling, pay me more." She even points to several facts in her article. "She ended up leaving the company and moving east, somewhere the minimum wage could double as a living wage." "But boy did I not anticipate a decade and a half ago that a car and a credit card and an a…

If you want to support a company that pays employees $12.50/hour in sf, that's your choice. However, I don't support that, and the thing about employment at will is we can use how a potential employer treats employees to evaluate the employer. > Neither are they responsible for paying you what you think is necessary for a comfortable life. However, kindly don't misrepresent the contents of Talia's article and shift t…

> However, I don't support that

No company cares because that's not how it works. Companies pay what the job is worth, then increase as needed if talent isn't available. Minimum wage work that anyone can do is not worth anything beyond that wage, regardless of where someone lives.

> she's asking for the bare minimums

No she's not. The job is worth a certain amount and deciding to accept and live with that is up to you. She was completely irresponsible by moving to an expensive area, getting a min. wage job and living beyond her means. 100% her fault. Then writing a strange article playing victim and calling out the CEO while including links to donate to her paypal account is about as ridiculous as it gets.

Re: Yelp’s Six-Year Conflict with Google

#109

Post by wnoise »

empath75 wrote: post #63
notatoad wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It can be illegal to use your market dominance in one area (search) to reinforce or create market dominance in other areas I think it's a stretch to say that searching for HVAC business listings and searching for HVAC business reviews are really different markets. If google had an HVAC subsidiary and they suppressed all search results and ads for competing HVAC companies, that would be abusing their dominant positio…

They didn't google for 'reviews', they literally googled for 'yelp'

"Yelp" is generic for "customer reviews"!

... half serious?

Re: Yelp’s Six-Year Conflict with Google

#110

Post by kefka »

keymone wrote: post #52
kefka wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://nypost.com/2014/10/13/restaurant-fights-yelps-alleged... Restaurant tells everyone to leave bad ratings, because good ratings are hidden since they didn't pay extortion. ----------------------------- https://www.reddit.com/r/food/comments/zdq0f/yelp_is_blackma... Yelp "makes 4-5 star reviews go away" when restaurant refuses to pay extortion. ----------------------------- http://www.cbsnews.com/news/inside-yelp…

> Restaurant tells everyone to leave bad ratings so a PR campaign, > https://www.reddit.com/r/food/comments/zdq0f.. . top comment from the same page: so, I found the Yelp page, and there are 26 reviews filtered out. Of those, the reviewers have a combined 27 friends, and they all come from just 5 people. None of them has more than 15 reviews, and the majority have less than 3. If you have almost no friends and almost…

You've been consistently a bad actor here, regarding Yelp. So, I searched google with "keymone yelp" (keymone is the HN username), and found the following:

https://github.com/keymone

[Name Removed] Yelp Hamburg, Germany http://www.yelp.com

Organizations @Yelp

Hmm...... Uusally people with direct interests (like yourself), will properly disclaim (I WORK FOR X, BUT NOT THEIR OPINIONS).

_________________________________

https://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=1zHW3SSTF3RFjHkgHzR...

Same pic as the Github profile. Certainly not a coincidence.

_________________________________

https://twitter.com/keymone

Again, this says "happy developer" at Yelp.com

_________________________________

Yeah, I'd suggest if you were to play the devil's advocate, I would properly disclaim that "[You] work at Yelp as a developer" instead of me playing guessing games and finally google your name and see dozens of profiles with the same Skiing pic.

Frankly, you prove more of what I'm saying. So, tell me. How many proxies do you use when you seed bad reviews for companies that don't pay up? Because already, what you're doing is SHADY SHIT.

Post reply on HN