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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

#101

Post by eropple »

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…

I don’t remember exactly how it was shared at Trip, and I think it was “Google Travel” or something rather than just a hotel booking platform, but that story generally lines up with my recollections from 2011-2012. Reading this thread made it come to mind again and I was wondering how it had turned out...

Re: TripAdvisor cuts hundreds of jobs after Google competition bites

#102

Post by chewz »

systematical wrote: post #64

Google is pretty much taking your shit nowadays and there is nothing you can do about it. That shit is either a company you built or a product of theirs that you used. They are not a search company, they are a conglomerate. They'll buy you or break you. It's funny when they fail though isn't it? Remember Google+? Who lead that initiative? What a travesty that was. Outside of Gmail, Google's UIs really do suck. But ba…

> Google is pretty much taking your shit nowadays

Apple is doing the same thing on it's own turf. If you make successful app expect to see 80% functionality crap copy added to next iOS release as a feature.

Re: TripAdvisor cuts hundreds of jobs after Google competition bites

#103

Post by fouc »

ronilan wrote: post #16

Reposting myself on the subject[1]: For anyone not aware (or confused by Silicon Valley tradition on constantly rewriting origin stories), TripAdvisor started in the dot com bubble as a B2B site. They clearly stated their business model was to provide reviews to other sites. Only that after the bubble burst, TripAdvisor had none left. They then basically invented modern SEO: long descriptive URLs, pages pulled out of…

Tripadvisor has a strong forum/community, will google's shallow places reviews kill that? Maybe.

Tripadvisor seems somewhat similar to Foursquare, and foursquare seems to be surviving on with their Swarm check-in app and their paid API service etc.

Re: TripAdvisor cuts hundreds of jobs after Google competition bites

#104

Post by MLpractitioner »

Marazan wrote: post #100
allovernow wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I first found Google flights a couple years ago it was ahead of all the other trip aggregators and unbelievably cheaper too. I think it forced the cheapo tickets craze because I had never seen $50 cross country tickets before that, and it practically destroyed all the little deals and gentlemens agreements that the other aggregators undoubtedly had.

Google Flights lack inventory (as they are powered by a GDS so anyone not filing to that GDS will be missing) and to get their incredible speed they cache and calculate prices which results in frequent pricing misses as well.

Pretty soon they'll have enough traffic nobody will be able to afford to fillng the GDS

Re: TripAdvisor cuts hundreds of jobs after Google competition bites

#105

Post by mjevans »

Johnny555 wrote: post #66
systematical wrote: post #64

Google is pretty much taking your shit nowadays and there is nothing you can do about it. That shit is either a company you built or a product of theirs that you used. They are not a search company, they are a conglomerate. They'll buy you or break you. It's funny when they fail though isn't it? Remember Google+? Who lead that initiative? What a travesty that was. Outside of Gmail, Google's UIs really do suck. But ba…

Google is pretty much taking your shit nowadays and there is nothing you can do about it That sounds like Amazon -- if you've got a hot selling product on Amazon, you can expect them to copy it and start selling it under the Amazon brand: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-20/got-a-hot...

Those Amazon branded products are the only things I really feel comfortable buying from Amazon these days... it's the one item I'm 99% positive they'd never allow co-mingling or other BS sources for.

Re: TripAdvisor cuts hundreds of jobs after Google competition bites

#106

Post by blackrock »

troysand wrote: post #97
Johnny555 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is pretty much taking your shit nowadays and there is nothing you can do about it That sounds like Amazon -- if you've got a hot selling product on Amazon, you can expect them to copy it and start selling it under the Amazon brand: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-20/got-a-hot...

Same applies to Microsoft as well. Remember Ami Pro, WordPerfect?

Isn’t Word Perfect still used in the legal profession, because of how it aligns the text with precision during print out? (Or something like that.)

Re: TripAdvisor cuts hundreds of jobs after Google competition bites

#107

Post by [deleted] »

sammorrowdrums wrote: post #81
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…

Amazon (and most successful middlemen) employ this strategy too, so aggressively. Get all the data flowing through you, use that data to screw those who you can profit from replacing. Like the people who made sites with public holidays, clocks, converters, calculators that Google has stolen all traffic from for years. Gradually it expands to larger prey, and it feels like a good experience for consumers so it works.…

[deleted]

Re: TripAdvisor cuts hundreds of jobs after Google competition bites

#108

Post by leppr »

sammorrowdrums wrote: post #81
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…

Amazon (and most successful middlemen) employ this strategy too, so aggressively. Get all the data flowing through you, use that data to screw those who you can profit from replacing. Like the people who made sites with public holidays, clocks, converters, calculators that Google has stolen all traffic from for years. Gradually it expands to larger prey, and it feels like a good experience for consumers so it works.…

> Not sure what can be done though. Antitrust stuff is really the last resort, and it's not a guarantee that it will even happen. In the EU it probably will I guess. USA not do sure.

Most regulations seemingly aimed at taming monopolies only end up reinforcing them, because megacorps have the means to circumvent/malleate regulations, while small firms do not.

The common-sense implicit mental model of the commercial playing field is a flat market with relatively fixed rules, with an enforcer of market rules (the state). Such a playing field would naturally disfavor unfair monopolies (i.e. those that aren't based on network effects, economies of scale, or superior talent).

Obviously, reality is very different: the market rules can be rewritten, and the entity in charge of rewriting them is itself a monopoly. So to prevent unfair monopolies, we would have to make that common-sense mental model a reality, which entails reworking national governance itself.

Re: TripAdvisor cuts hundreds of jobs after Google competition bites

#109

Post by modo_mario »

systematical wrote: post #64

Google is pretty much taking your shit nowadays and there is nothing you can do about it. That shit is either a company you built or a product of theirs that you used. They are not a search company, they are a conglomerate. They'll buy you or break you. It's funny when they fail though isn't it? Remember Google+? Who lead that initiative? What a travesty that was. Outside of Gmail, Google's UIs really do suck. But ba…

>Remember Google+? Who lead that initiative? What a travesty that was. Outside of Gmail, Google's UIs really do suck.

I don't think that was an issue with the UI. Their UI was quite nice and the overall UX was too. Thing was they started by driving up hype, then letting a lot of people in but not everyone. Those lots left because it didn't have the main drive of a social media platform. Users. Their friends weren't allowed in yet. And then more people were let in who left. And then everyone. A horrid way to launch.

Re: TripAdvisor cuts hundreds of jobs after Google competition bites

#110

Post by modo_mario »

eru wrote: post #73
systematical wrote: post #64

Google is pretty much taking your shit nowadays and there is nothing you can do about it. That shit is either a company you built or a product of theirs that you used. They are not a search company, they are a conglomerate. They'll buy you or break you. It's funny when they fail though isn't it? Remember Google+? Who lead that initiative? What a travesty that was. Outside of Gmail, Google's UIs really do suck. But ba…

> They'll buy you or break you. You say that like they are equally bad for you. Being bought out is great for the previous owners. (Otherwise, they wouldn't sell.)

>You say that like they are equally bad for you. Being bought out is great for the previous owners. (Otherwise, they wouldn't sell.)

If the other option is being broken then of course you sell. Even if you could make more money in the long run if they weren't holding a gun to your head.

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