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

Please describe what you consider a fair practice to seize a market in general terms.

But that's not the case in other markets. Travel to Australia, and you'll find that basically the only reviews are from Americans. All the Australians use Google.

Which makes Yelp in Australia GREAT for Americans. A feature I wish they would build out officially. I like seeing how other people like me rate things. When someone says, "The pizza ain't like home." I know to trust that person if they're from NY. Or, how the Texans ranked local brisket, how people who spoke German rated the schnitzel, or how people from states that grow apples rank apple pie. A million other examples. Profoundly useful for finding good reviews.

Anyway neither Google or Yelp offer this feature, and it seems so fundamentally easy to build out. Just aggregate reviews by reviewer meta-data, no? Or something as simple as, "Show me where people who rated this place a 5 also ate." Mix in "check-ins" (and tie those to discount tiers, since Yelp can) and you can start seeing, "Show me places where people rate 5, and actually return regularly..." This stuff makes for powerful reviews. You don't need first names, you don't need to worry about fake reviewers... they have my credit card linked to them, and if that serves as a reward system... anyway Google and Yelp are both missing the boat on a lot of this stuff.

I really despise how they both make me use a "real" name now. No way I want friends and family seeing what I write. If a place sucks, I want to be free to trash it without fear of someone saying, "Hey {person with a fairly unique first name who is fairly well-known in a relatively small community}, why did you trash my pizza?" or, "Hey Mr. Regular, why haven't you written me a review yet?" or, "Hey Grandson, I see that you're reviewing the same BDSM shop your grandfather and I love!" Ha. Having real IDs on the web... creepy as fuck.

In a wider more pedestrian sense, there is a some kettle-pot-black involved here, at least in my opinion.

Yelp's a little monopolistic middle man. Everyone reads and writes reviews on Yelp because everyone reads and writes reviews on Yelp. Market dominance today is the main ingredient for dominance tomorrow. Everyone uses Google search, maps, phones etc. Google gets all the data & ad revenue. They use this to maintain their dominance.

Pick your euphemism for this position: momentum, network effects, buffet's moat, thiel's-monopoly, dominance, viral feedback loops.... Whatever you call it, a restaurant can't opt out of yelp, just like a website can't opt out of google. Their rules are the rules. There is no option B.

A downstream company can be harmed when Google competes direct (AKA the terror of 2006), when they redirect traffic to alternative web pages or disrupts market dominance downstream, intentionally or otherwise.

This is like Yelp's relationship with restaurants. Yelp can stop sending a restaurant customers. Google can stop sending Yelp users. There are no "market dynamics," no "invisible hands," price signals or whatnot. There is no "market" to impose discipline in the way the laissez-faire idealization does on paper.

So... I'm kind of torn. I want to see far more complaints, cases & legislation targeting market dominance, size and monopoly. On the other hand, the hypocrisy...