Actually, a huge mistake yelp made is forced you in their app. Very very anti user.
CBS “60 Minutes” piece on Google’s abuse of dominance
81–90 of 191 posts
Re: CBS “60 Minutes” piece on Google’s abuse of dominance
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem comes with the fact that it's possible to game algorithms. We have examples where a poor service or website becomes (remains) popular, because they're good at gaming the system. Eg Pinterest. Or in the case of the example they brought up in the video, where they counted the number of reviews you could game that system by just creating fake reviews or trying to just get more of them through non-organic way…
'Eg Pinterest' A classic example of a business that Google should be using their dominance against, but aren't.
In a roundabout way Google are more like Pinterest than you think. Both utilising other people’s content.
All just glorified databases with different UI really. Yelp kind of has original content in people’s opinion of db entries.
YouTube however is slightly different since people post short and long form video on which is mostly original.
Interesting.
Re: CBS “60 Minutes” piece on Google’s abuse of dominance
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
> hey now insert ads into the top of the search flow, commingling results and ad Google has done this as long as I can recall - the top few results are always “sponsored”. Yelp also does this, by placing a star on your map instead of a rating.
Google was created to build an open search engine that doesn't rely on ad revenue. Literally, that's what the original paper says: http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html
They failed at that a long time ago.
Re: CBS “60 Minutes” piece on Google’s abuse of dominance
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Personally, I don't think Google should be obliged to promote all kind of crappy 2nd rate products out there 1. So you believe anticompetitive practices are okay when you "personally" don't like the competing product. 2. It is not promoting Yelp when it is the organic search algorithm. The point is that they are demoting Yelp in favor of their own evidently inferior product, as their own algorithm would have otherw…
In a fair world, there would be an option in Google for "Show me reviews from X" where users are forced to select X (i.e. no defaults provided). The problem is that Yelp is the one who wants to be monopoly and they would never agreed to this. They don't want Google Maps to show any reviews at all. Instead they insist that people must take an additional step to go to Yelp's own website for reviews. This is unworkable…
> In a fair world, there would be an option in Google…
In a fair world, if you don't like the results Google's service provides, you'll choose a better service provider.
Google's search service has always used a business model like “give us your query; we'll apply our proprietary algorithm and return results”.
If you don't like those results, you don't like Google's service. You can ask them to change their service so that you like it better; but they have never agreed to do so for you, and they're under no obligation.
Google should be able to do what they like; users can choose not to use Google's services.
Re: CBS “60 Minutes” piece on Google’s abuse of dominance
#85Yelp is crying sour grapes here. There are so many ways they could have innovated to stay relevant but has anything changed in years there? They could have hired professional reviewers. Yelp reviews are notoriously bad. They could have let you choose what you prefer, example (quality vs quantity) and given you custom ratings or only included reviews from people that share similar tastes. Following up on the last idea…
Yelp never made sense. It's surprising that it got so big. It's obvious that Google maps was going to offer the same service as them and that Yelp would not stand a chance.
Re: CBS “60 Minutes” piece on Google’s abuse of dominance
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a prevailing "tech can do no wrong" attitude in the tech community, and it absolutely needs to be challenged hard.
> There is a prevailing "tech can do no wrong" attitude in the tech community Is there? I see the opposite in communities including the one we're on. The anti-big-web-company torches seem brightest within compared to the more accepting yet non-ignorant outside.
I think it's not quite "tech can do no wrong", but "all problems can be solved with tech" is definitely prevalent. I guess it's because we're all tech guys here and "if you only have a hammer...".
Re: CBS “60 Minutes” piece on Google’s abuse of dominance
#87CBS 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 Googl…
> Google was scrapping Yelp reviews to show snippets in their Google Places product. Yelp CEO didn't liked that
Who would? What would Google do if someone decided to scrape all their Google Maps, Shopping content? Apart from adding stronger Captchas, that is... Google has been stealing content from smaller and better sites to improve their own half-arsed products for many years.
Re: CBS “60 Minutes” piece on Google’s abuse of dominance
#88The problem is not Google. The problem is that the government is unable to get his head around an internet based monopoly. Google shouldnt be allowed to host more than 50% of searches by law. In any other industry enjoying a monopoly position in search as google has enjoyed all these years would have reason enough to break it up into smaller pieces.
> In any other industry enjoying a monopoly position in search as google has enjoyed all these years would have reason enough to break it up into smaller pieces. No, it wouldn't. Formation of monopolies is not illegal or grounds for breakup. Anticompetitively leveraging market power in one market to monopolize another market is illegal, and a variety of remedies, including breakup, may be available for that.
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Re: CBS “60 Minutes” piece on Google’s abuse of dominance
#89CBS 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 Googl…
The problem with IE was not that Microsoft developed IE, the problem with IE was that Microsoft used its ownership of the operating system and MS Office as well as contracts with PC manufacturers to give IE an overwhelming advantage over the competition.
Re: CBS “60 Minutes” piece on Google’s abuse of dominance
#90Yelp is crying sour grapes here. There are so many ways they could have innovated to stay relevant but has anything changed in years there? They could have hired professional reviewers. Yelp reviews are notoriously bad. They could have let you choose what you prefer, example (quality vs quantity) and given you custom ratings or only included reviews from people that share similar tastes. Following up on the last idea…
Craigslist is terrible but people still use it. If Google entered that market and showed their own classified ads as search results above Craigslist's, would you say that "Craigslist couldn't see their audience was going to dry up"?
At what point is it too much? Google wants to classify all the world's information—doesn't seem like there are many markets it wouldn't enter. Is every business just living on borrowed time because the Eye of Google hasn't swung toward them yet?