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

How Google Map Hackers Can Destroy a Business at Will

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 132 posts

Re: How Google Map Hackers Can Destroy a Business at Will

#51

Post by vinceguidry »

vdaniuk wrote: post #21
vinceguidry wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article didn't discredit anything. The title is "How Google Map Hackers Can Destroy a Business at Will" not "How Google Map Hackers Destroyed Serbian Crown".

But the article didn't support the title. The title supported by the article could be "How Google Map Hackers Can Contribute To The Demise Of The Restaurant On A Downhill Trajectory". This is just one sensationalist title.

Why so much hate on the headline? The article itself is perfectly reasonable, so just read and digest that. It sounds like you want to just read the title and understand everything.

Re: How Google Map Hackers Can Destroy a Business at Will

#52

Post by mike_hearn »

twoodfin wrote: post #16
bhartzer wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't even rely on a business' website anymore, though. You have to actually call them on the phone and talk to a real person there, at the business. Too often even the business owner doesn't have time to update their website or get the "web guy" (read: his brother in law's son) to update the website in a timely manner.

If I were Google, Yelp, or Facebook, I'd give serious consideration to selling local businesses pre-created, theme-able web sites on a subscription basis. They already have essentially all the content such sites would need, and better designers than most small businesses would have access to. I regularly run into local places that use their Facebook page as their de facto virtual storefront, but that format could be…

They already do: Facebook and Google both have a "pages" feature which is designed for exactly that. Most businesses don't seem to want their Facebook/Google page to be their official website though, perhaps they think it looks unprofessional.

Re: How Google Map Hackers Can Destroy a Business at Will

#53

Post by twoodfin »

sharth wrote: post #24
twoodfin wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I were Google, Yelp, or Facebook, I'd give serious consideration to selling local businesses pre-created, theme-able web sites on a subscription basis. They already have essentially all the content such sites would need, and better designers than most small businesses would have access to. I regularly run into local places that use their Facebook page as their de facto virtual storefront, but that format could be…

There are companies that exist who target that market. squarespace.com for example.

Yeah, but with Squarespace you actually have to do the work of building and updating your web site. I'm proposing Google, for example, use a mix of algorithms and design to expand that "info box" you get when you search for Willy's Pizza or Suds Laundromat into a full site, and sell it as a turnkey solution.

"Here's your (crummy, last-updated-2011) web site today, and here's the beautiful one we've already built for you, including full online reservations and take out ordering. With just a few clicks you can customize it with photos or a new menu. Pay us $NN/month and we'll immediately switch your domain to point at this shiny new site."

Squarespace could move in this direction, too, by continuing to specialize and extend its templates until a good looking, functional site takes an average of minutes. But Google has the advantage of already knowing enough about the average small business to build it a better web site in literally milliseconds.

Re: How Google Map Hackers Can Destroy a Business at Will

#54

Post by gnaritas »

mike_hearn wrote: post #52
twoodfin wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I were Google, Yelp, or Facebook, I'd give serious consideration to selling local businesses pre-created, theme-able web sites on a subscription basis. They already have essentially all the content such sites would need, and better designers than most small businesses would have access to. I regularly run into local places that use their Facebook page as their de facto virtual storefront, but that format could be…

They already do: Facebook and Google both have a "pages" feature which is designed for exactly that. Most businesses don't seem to want their Facebook/Google page to be their official website though, perhaps they think it looks unprofessional.

It is unprofessional.

Re: How Google Map Hackers Can Destroy a Business at Will

#55

Post by will_brown »

hughdbrown wrote: post #43
[deleted] wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

How does the First Amendment apply to Yelp reviewers? Is Congress making laws that abridge the rights of free speech in Yelp reviews? On a separate point, I think the percentage of customers a corrupt business owner could defraud is pretty low. Happy customers may post reviews, but defrauded customers will go after a business like angry hornets. A small number of frauds will become a disproportionate number of negati…

With the comment deleted above, it is difficult to place the context of yours. However, the following is probably relevant/insightful either way:

Judge William Petty wrote that the negative reviews in question were not protected by the First Amendment because "If the reviewer was never a customer of the business, then the review is not an opinion; instead, the review is based on a false statement of fact ... And 'there is no constitutional value in false statements of fact.'"

Re: How Google Map Hackers Can Destroy a Business at Will

#56

Post by CalRobert »

drivingmenuts wrote: post #10

This is an example of one of the major problems of crowd-sourcing: trust. There is no way to verify that the integrity of the submitter, who could be giving wrong information due to malice, incompetence, or as a prank. There's entirely too much trust in crowdsourcing.

Well... we could use a robust and well-established web of trust based infrastructure, but only weirdos like me go to key signing parties :-(

Re: How Google Map Hackers Can Destroy a Business at Will

#57

Post by funkdobiest »

troymc wrote: post #30

Aren't there large-scale services to whom a small business owner can pay an annual subscription fee, where the service will monitor the accuracy of their Google, Yelp, Open Street Map, Wikipedia, Yellowpages, etc. information? The article mentions some person on a retainer who does this on a shop-by-shop basis, but it seems to me that this is something that can be automated and scaled.

Here is a free one( up to 5 listings) that feeds Google https://mybusinesslistingmanager.com

Re: How Google Map Hackers Can Destroy a Business at Will

#58

Post by spot »

Vik1ng wrote: post #26
drivingmenuts wrote: post #10

This is an example of one of the major problems of crowd-sourcing: trust. There is no way to verify that the integrity of the submitter, who could be giving wrong information due to malice, incompetence, or as a prank. There's entirely too much trust in crowdsourcing.

I think the real problem is this google has the half baked crowd-sourcing. Where you actually have a closed system and then let some people crowd source on top of it and have different ranks and people approving. It's the same reason Wikipedia is losing editors, because people don't want to wait for some admin to approve it. In OpenStreetMap as a community project which is know as such people are much more likely to…

OSM is still so irrelevant that the spammers and scammers have not targeted it yet.

Once they do, it will have the same problems Google does, but worse because they don't have the resources to fight back.

It is much easier to fix mistakes than it is to fight an active adversary.

Re: How Google Map Hackers Can Destroy a Business at Will

#59

Post by mierle »

troymc wrote: post #30

Aren't there large-scale services to whom a small business owner can pay an annual subscription fee, where the service will monitor the accuracy of their Google, Yelp, Open Street Map, Wikipedia, Yellowpages, etc. information? The article mentions some person on a retainer who does this on a shop-by-shop basis, but it seems to me that this is something that can be automated and scaled.

GoDaddy's Get Found does this; http://getfound.com. Disclaimer: I work at GoDaddy on Get Found.

Re: How Google Map Hackers Can Destroy a Business at Will

#60

Post by jokoon »

I always wondered about this, but now it's obvious: google doesn't make sure those business info are accurate, it might have a huge cost to verify those info, for example asking for some paperwork to check.

openstreetmap, on the other hand, seems much more trustful on this, since it's moderated a little like wikipedia is.

I guess if openstreetmap was more popular, you might start to see similar problems described in that article.

I'm sure even governments would not want to give the data of businesses opening/closing for free.

Post reply on HN