Live data from Hacker News

CBS “60 Minutes” piece on Google’s abuse of dominance

yelpblog.com

11–20 of 191 posts

Re: CBS “60 Minutes” piece on Google’s abuse of dominance

#14

60 Minutes didn't reveal anything here a lot of us don't already know, there wasn't any hard-hitting journalism or incredible revelations. But given 60 Minutes reaches millions of people, it's probably massively raised awareness of these issues with a significant number of people who don't generally follow tech explicitly.

> 60 Minutes didn't reveal anything here a lot of us don't already know

In my experience, 60 Minutes is less about breaking news than competently explaining it. The tech community, as a whole, is generally bad at communicating its non-commercial preferences. This issue is no exception.

Re: CBS “60 Minutes” piece on Google’s abuse of dominance

#15

It honestly sounds like Yelp is just salty at the fact that their SEO marketing isn't as effective as it used to be because of Google's improvement to their search engine algorithms. Also, it's laughable that of all companies, Yelp is the one complaining about Google.

TripAdvisor is also not happy: https://www.recode.net/2016/8/6/12393586/google-yelp-tripadv...

Re: CBS “60 Minutes” piece on Google’s abuse of dominance

#16
Mainstream media story about web company? Check. Nothing new? Check. Negative? Check. Of course Yelp participated...but Yelp angle aside, CBS is just following the news cycle patterns of their brethren. I'm mentioning this a lot these days, but feels like watching cattle being herded (albeit willingly).

Re: CBS “60 Minutes” piece on Google’s abuse of dominance

#17

Yelp is not that innocent either, their "practices" are just as questionable, if not more questionable, than Google's.

Only sharing for reference, you reminded me that someone made a documentary ('billion dollar bully') about this (not released yet, but supposedly being premiered soon):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion_Dollar_Bully

http://www.prostfilms.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHEbVh3Yhrw (recent interview with the film creator)

Re: CBS “60 Minutes” piece on Google’s abuse of dominance

#18

It honestly sounds like Yelp is just salty at the fact that their SEO marketing isn't as effective as it used to be because of Google's improvement to their search engine algorithms. Also, it's laughable that of all companies, Yelp is the one complaining about Google.

>>because of Google's improvement to their search engine algorithms.

"Improvement": Post Google's own offering first and also fill page with ads to keep users within Google's own sites.

Re: CBS “60 Minutes” piece on Google’s abuse of dominance

#19
CBS interview leaves out critical details. Initially, Google was scrapping Yelp reviews to show snippets in their Google Places product. Yelp CEO didn't liked that and demanded to remove all snippets. Google said it had right to show snippets like any other websites and if Yelp says their content is "private" then Google shouldn't be crawling them at all. That's what they did. This caused Yelp to disappear from Google and their traffic tanked. So after this some deal was reached. Eventually, Google just decided to do their own reviews and started showing them in Google Maps. Yelp then started this PR war that is now going on for years.

Personally, I don't think Google should be obliged to promote all kind of crappy 2nd rate products out there. I hate Yelp. They are greedy bastards who have cornered up huge content entirely contributed by volunteers. They are the ones wanting to monopolize market in this area and avoid having Google as player here. They are the ones who want big price for their theft from millions of hours donated by volunteers. Yelp reviews and ratings should be free and in open domain by vary nature of how it was created (and so should be Amazon's review - but at least they are not entirely volunteers driven website). On the top of this, Yelp has remained mostly stagnant waiting for their big payout day. I don't consider them good for users or internet or industry. So for me this is pick between the worse evil.

The debate is so very similar to IE on Windows, however. Should Microsoft be prevented from creating better[1] browser and not allowed to complete with Netscape? Should they be prevented from putting their integrated polished experience in front and center that benefits the customers? One can say that suing Microsoft actually worked out best overall for industry. I'm not too sure how alternate world would have looked like. History certainly rhymes here.

[1] You can say whatever about IE's lack of implementing proper standards but it was the fastest browser in its day. It was truly free no strings attached (as long as you are on Windows) and it advanced many things, for example, it was the first browser to implement CSS, XML parsing and tons of functionality that is now part of HTML5 standards.

Re: CBS “60 Minutes” piece on Google’s abuse of dominance

#20
Yelp has a point. Google, and largely Larry Page's insistence on shortening the time between query and answer is starting to stumble under the reality that the source data Google utilizes for its own services isn't the best there is as Yelp rightly laid out. It may be wise for Google to back off on some touchy verticals or to integrate 3rd party data sources to stymie any attempts by regulators to flex. This is the perfect populist opportunity for any public official to run on. Maybe this will take some of the heat off of Amazon for a minute.
Post reply on HN