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

Yelp Is Replacing Restaurants’ Phone Numbers So Grubhub Can Take a Cut

vice.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 461 posts

Re: Yelp Is Replacing Restaurants’ Phone Numbers So Grubhub Can Take a Cut

#361

Post by jrochkind1 »

asdff wrote: post #220
mabbo wrote: post #142

It feels as though much of tech has gone from helping people accomplish their goals efficiently to a business model of extracting rents while providing no or little value. In this example, what benefit is GrubHub providing to anyone? The person used Yelp solely to look up the phone number of a restaurant. GrubHub deserves 15% of his order for that? Why, because they made a deal to give X% of it to Yelp, and convinced…

To me, this is a sign of grubhub/insert copycat delivery service circling the drain, trying to extract whatever cash they can get before the inevitable. Anecdata, but among my peers people sort by delivery fee or try to game the system for a new user discount. Delivery fees can easily be $7 now which is like buying another entire portion at some restaurants. Personally, I use grubhub a lot--as a menu to look at for w…

> Personally, I use grubhub a lot--as a menu to look at for when I call the restaurant directly with my pickup order.

Which is of course exactly what the article is about. Depending on where you got that phone number, turns out you may be using grubhub to place the order and give grubhub a cut, when you think you are calling the restaurant directly with your pickup order.

Re: Yelp Is Replacing Restaurants’ Phone Numbers So Grubhub Can Take a Cut

#362

Post by themagician »

mabbo wrote: post #142

It feels as though much of tech has gone from helping people accomplish their goals efficiently to a business model of extracting rents while providing no or little value. In this example, what benefit is GrubHub providing to anyone? The person used Yelp solely to look up the phone number of a restaurant. GrubHub deserves 15% of his order for that? Why, because they made a deal to give X% of it to Yelp, and convinced…

> It feels as though much of tech has gone from helping people accomplish their goals efficiently to a business model of extracting rents while providing no or little value.

This isn't new. So much of what we consider "value" today is just information asymmetry. Hiding phone numbers, hiding true costs, stuffing data into a proprietary database with a service contract, hiding whoever the real manufacturer of something is… that is where the money is made.

The Internet was supposed to fix that, but instead of getting an "Internet" we got a series of private networks, loosely connected, with gatekeepers. You can visit different ones, but they don't' really talk to each other. You can add your own information, but it won't really get seen by anyone because everyone has been conditioned to go through one of the big gates.

We tried for a while, with things like open protocols and semantic web, but most people quickly realized there was a lot more money to be had creating walled gardens.

Re: Yelp Is Replacing Restaurants’ Phone Numbers So Grubhub Can Take a Cut

#363

Post by dragonwriter »

CamelCaseName wrote: post #145
ac29 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google maps has definitely improved, but they are even worse than most review sites in the near worthlessness of their review scores. The vast majority of restaurants are rated between 4 and 5 stars, with the difference between a 4.1 and 4.6 being huge - the former being 50/50 that its good, the latter being the sort of place worth waiting in line for. The closest Michelin starred restaurant to me is rated 0.2 points…

Well sure, because a rating doesn't measure how good a restaurant is compared to all other restaurants. Ratings measure how good a restaurant is compared to other restaurants in the same class because that is where their patrons' reference frame comes from. It's also unfair to rate both a $1 coffee and a $8 coffee on the same basis, it's clear that the cost constraints put pressure on how good you can make that coffe…

> Ratings measure how good a restaurant is compared to other restaurants in the same class because that is where their patrons' reference frame comes from.

In the US, ratings measure, in significant part, race/ethnicity/subculture from which the restaurants clientele is drawn, because White Americans give higher ratings for similar descriptive satisfaction levels than other demographics (tending toward not unacceptable = 5/5.). Asians give the lowest scores for similar descriptive satisfaction levels.

Re: Yelp Is Replacing Restaurants’ Phone Numbers So Grubhub Can Take a Cut

#364

Post by Aeolun »

tempestn wrote: post #360
mabbo wrote: post #142

It feels as though much of tech has gone from helping people accomplish their goals efficiently to a business model of extracting rents while providing no or little value. In this example, what benefit is GrubHub providing to anyone? The person used Yelp solely to look up the phone number of a restaurant. GrubHub deserves 15% of his order for that? Why, because they made a deal to give X% of it to Yelp, and convinced…

"Something else" indeed. Recently a scam site popped up that copied the branding of our site, autotempest.com. (They registered autoStempest.com and copied our logos and such.) They claimed to be a dealership based in Texas, but were actually posting fake vehicles and having people wire them money (which they obviously kept). One of the things these scammers did to appear legit was set up a Yelp page with a bunch of…

What I do not understand is why nobody copied yelp with an ethical business model yet.

Re: Yelp Is Replacing Restaurants’ Phone Numbers So Grubhub Can Take a Cut

#365

Post by spiznnx »

Last month, Grubhub hijacked restaurants web traffic by buying similar domains for the same reason, so this isn't too surprising for them: https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/28/19154220/grubhub-seamless...

I assume Grubhub's Eat24 acquisition from Yelp came with some poorly written contract clause that allows them to force Yelp to implement this absurd feature as part of their "ordering partner integration", but maybe Yelp is unethical AND stupid after all and is doing it for part of the take. We'll probably never know. Either way their reputation will be ruined.

Disclosure: I interned at Yelp engineering and enjoyed it. The engineers were all nice people with as much integrity as one would hope.

Re: Yelp Is Replacing Restaurants’ Phone Numbers So Grubhub Can Take a Cut

#366

Post by milesskorpen »

Aeolun wrote: post #364
tempestn wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Something else" indeed. Recently a scam site popped up that copied the branding of our site, autotempest.com. (They registered autoStempest.com and copied our logos and such.) They claimed to be a dealership based in Texas, but were actually posting fake vehicles and having people wire them money (which they obviously kept). One of the things these scammers did to appear legit was set up a Yelp page with a bunch of…

What I do not understand is why nobody copied yelp with an ethical business model yet.

There are a lot of vertical specific ones. Trip. OpenTable. Thumbtack. Hard to monetize though.

Re: Yelp Is Replacing Restaurants’ Phone Numbers So Grubhub Can Take a Cut

#367

Post by stevejohnson »

oneepic wrote: post #329

Would any Yelpers here care to comment on the issue? I interviewed there in the past, and know friends that work there. When I asked what they thought about the "blackmail" rumors from a while back they just laughed it off, because they honestly thought they were just rumors. And they enjoyed their work, and their work-life balance, and all that. Sounded like a fun, positive place to work, if you ignored the headline…

I am a former Yelp engineer. I think the thing this story describes is dumb and bad and they should stop doing it. Inserting yourself as a useless middleman is a classic shitty startup move.

Here are some great reasons for current and former Yelp engineers not to engage in internet debates about accusations of nefariousness in other areas such as the review filter or sorting algorithm:

1. Being in internet debates mostly sucks in general, especially with people who by default hate you.

2. Yelp has a blanket policy that you shouldn't engage in these debates.

3. Yelp has been sued some number of times and might be again. I would be paranoid that something I said here would be used in another bullshit lawsuit, especially if I were truly in a position to know things.

4. It's pretty clear that the PR battle was lost long ago, regardless of the truth. Leaving a comment on a thread like this changes literally nothing and is a waste of time. Yes, that means I think I'm wasting my time right now. :-)

Every Yelp engineer I've met has intentions at least as good as, say, the average Google engineer. Sites like Yelp can have negative effects on small businesses the same way e.g. Spotify might have an effect on independent music or Airbnb has an effect on the apartment rental market in a city, and engineers aren't always good at recognizing those effects as problematic, but Yelp engineers are certainly no worse than your standard Silicon Valley type.

I still trust Yelp reviews more than I trust local business reviews on any other platform.

Re: Yelp Is Replacing Restaurants’ Phone Numbers So Grubhub Can Take a Cut

#369

Post by ativzzz »

ortusdux wrote: post #23
sundayedition wrote: post #5

I've found Google Maps review quality and quantity improved over the last few years so it's rare that I'd even open Yelp in recent months. With this, I'm deleting my Yelp app.

The 7 years that google owned zagat correlated with a massive improvement in the quality of their reviews. I have done the google maps local guide program a bit and the way it is structured is great. The google map slowly switches into proactive mode and solicits photos, ratings, and reviews. A few months ago a friend asked me what I was up to, so I sent them a photo of 2 flights of beer in an attempt to get them to…

> The google map slowly switches into proactive mode and solicits photos, ratings, and reviews.

Funny, I hate when google asks me this. It feels like an invasion of my privacy, a reminder that they are tracking everything I do.

Re: Yelp Is Replacing Restaurants’ Phone Numbers So Grubhub Can Take a Cut

#370

Post by guiltygatorade »

Aeolun wrote: post #364
tempestn wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Something else" indeed. Recently a scam site popped up that copied the branding of our site, autotempest.com. (They registered autoStempest.com and copied our logos and such.) They claimed to be a dealership based in Texas, but were actually posting fake vehicles and having people wire them money (which they obviously kept). One of the things these scammers did to appear legit was set up a Yelp page with a bunch of…

What I do not understand is why nobody copied yelp with an ethical business model yet.

Probably because most users are blissfully ignorant of the less ethical bits of how Yelp conducts its business.

As long as there isn't a huge discrepancy between the expectation and the services/goods rendered, most people can't tell the difference over something that is largely subjective anyway.

Post reply on HN