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TripAdvisor cuts hundreds of jobs after Google competition bites

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Re: TripAdvisor cuts hundreds of jobs after Google competition bites

#51

Post by reaperducer »

droopyEyelids wrote: post #29
mattmanser wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been going on a long time, Google's been killing off aggregators by cannibalising their market for almost a decade now. I do wonder how sustainable it is, previously these aggregators did lots of things at Google's request, cleaning the noise out and laying everything out in nice data-annotations. More fool them, it turns out. Google cross-references them all, builds their 'own' data and drives them all out of b…

This makes me think about how Google has begun to demand recipe sites include Calorie counts. Are we a few years away from Google Recipe Search?

One of the sites I maintain has a collection of recipes. It was only when Google started sending me email because they lacked calorie counts that I realized what a terrible idea microdata is for everyone but Google.

I have since taken all of the microdata out of the HTML. If google wants it, it can pay for it.

Re: TripAdvisor cuts hundreds of jobs after Google competition bites

#52

Post by tenpies »

astrodust wrote: post #27
h2odragon wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Nationalised search service" ... interesting thought. Legions of Librarians, finally compensated justly and lauded for their heroism. Wonder if they'd get uniforms and "be all you can be" recruiting campaigns too.

You've got a space force with their own wacky uniforms, so anything is possible.

The Space Force uniform was a Kobayashi Maru.

If money was not spent and they used an existing uniform to keep costs low, critics would complain that the uniform does not match the environment.

If money was spent to design a new uniform that matched the environment, critics would complain that money was wasted on uniforms and they would probably acknowledge the comicality of thinking that a uniformed soldier in space would care about camouflage instead of things like breathing and wondering why they're in uniform in the vacuum of space.

Either way, critics will complain and Space Force personnel will continue to exist in desks for the conceivable future, so uniforms should clearly have been optimized for comfort.

Re: TripAdvisor cuts hundreds of jobs after Google competition bites

#53

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

bobbiechen wrote: post #47
dba7dba wrote: post #9

Any business without physical inventory that can be automated in a way to sell/buy should really worry about Google. Eventually Google will come for that market as their new crop of managers/execs will want to make the number to get their bonus and move up the ladder. I know a guy who used to work at tripadvisor years ago. At the time Google was trying to start up their own hotel search business but they didn't have…

There's a similar story from Jeremy Stoppelman about Google scraping Yelp content in 2010 even though their licensing agreement ended in 2007. Source is the Senate Antitrust Committee hearing in 2011 on Google's dominance, the BI link below includes the exhibits as well. https://www.businessinsider.com/yelp-ceo-on-google-2011-9

I'm sure they'll get fined $1M in 2036 or something. That'll even it all out.

Re: TripAdvisor cuts hundreds of jobs after Google competition bites

#54

Post by Maxious »

travelbyphone wrote: post #45
eggie5 wrote: post #37

this killed Trivago too

I see a ton of Trivago ads on tv for many years now, but I never used it, nor do I ever heard of a friend using it or recommending it

> The [Federal Court of Australia] ruled that from at least December 2016, Trivago misled consumers by representing its website would quickly and easily help users identify the cheapest rates available for a given hotel.

> In fact, Trivago used an algorithm which placed significant weight on which online hotel booking site paid Trivago the highest cost-per-click fee in determining its website rankings and often did not highlight the cheapest rates for consumers.

https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/trivago-misled-consume...

Re: TripAdvisor cuts hundreds of jobs after Google competition bites

#55

Post by mattnewton »

tenpies wrote: post #52
astrodust wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've got a space force with their own wacky uniforms, so anything is possible.

The Space Force uniform was a Kobayashi Maru. If money was not spent and they used an existing uniform to keep costs low, critics would complain that the uniform does not match the environment. If money was spent to design a new uniform that matched the environment, critics would complain that money was wasted on uniforms and they would probably acknowledge the comicality of thinking that a uniformed soldier in space…

Not to get too off topic, but it's clearly a self inflicted problem, where nobody would complain about spending money on space force uniforms if space force's existence made any sense.

Re: TripAdvisor cuts hundreds of jobs after Google competition bites

#56

Post by objektif »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #53
bobbiechen wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a similar story from Jeremy Stoppelman about Google scraping Yelp content in 2010 even though their licensing agreement ended in 2007. Source is the Senate Antitrust Committee hearing in 2011 on Google's dominance, the BI link below includes the exhibits as well. https://www.businessinsider.com/yelp-ceo-on-google-2011-9

I'm sure they'll get fined $1M in 2036 or something. That'll even it all out.

There is a name for that right? "Be fucking evil if it doesn't cost much" or something like that.

Re: TripAdvisor cuts hundreds of jobs after Google competition bites

#57

Post by s3r3nity »

> Google has also crammed the top of its mobile search results with more ads. This has forced many companies, including TripAdvisor, to buy more ads from the search giant to keep online traffic flowing.

That seems wild to me: not only does Google get more $ from ads, but they have this massive power to wipe out competitors this way, with minimal repercussions. Two-birds, one stone.

Re: TripAdvisor cuts hundreds of jobs after Google competition bites

#58

Post by prpl »

conradfr wrote: post #31
rapnie wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are no angels either, or at least their daughter company. Two weeks ago TheFork featured in Dutch TV program Rambam where they proved that they boost restaurant ratings. They listed their own fake restaurant (possible, no problem) and gave their own reviews, trying to become lowest rated in the ranking. Giving rebates on couverts may boost your ranking too. Restaurant owners interviewed are not too happy as well…

I used to work on the search team at TheFork years ago (we were already a TripAdvisor subsidiary) and don't know about the current practices but back then there was no foul play about the ratings, which is not even the default sorting on the site. Also, not specifically related to TheFork (because I don't remember...), do all ratings should always have the same weight? Are old ratings as relevant as newer? If you wan…

I would expect rating should be an exponentially weighted moving average, first and foremost, with ratings also weighted by some form of user reputation. The user reputation is the hard part (at least for Amazon I guess)

Re: TripAdvisor cuts hundreds of jobs after Google competition bites

#59

Post by jeromebaek »

mfer wrote: post #2

Google controls search. Google launches a competitor to a web service presented through search. Competitor takes enough of a hit layoffs are needed. This screams of a problem. Especially for consumers and a competitive market. The kind of thing that traditionally caused governments to step in.

this reeks of internal political problems. this isn't good for google nor for google's partners. the only reason they would autocannibalize is if there are too many engineers sitting around doing almost nothing so they start inventing problems to solve.
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