Yelp’s Six-Year Conflict with Google • Hacker News Board

Re: Yelp’s Six-Year Conflict with Google

#21

Post by putlake » Tue, Jul 04, 2017, 8:42 PM UTC

redm wrote: post #9

"Mr. Stoppelman feels he has no choice. Like a lot of small internet companies, Yelp lives in a world where one company, Google, accounts for an outsize share of its business, and could destroy it at any time." That sums it up for Yelp and many others, myself included. Combine that reality with the black box that Google is, in many ways, and you have an inaccessible behemoth who's decisions decide the fate of many. G…

I agree. As a web publisher who depends on advertising for revenue and Google for traffic, things are getting more and more difficult. Google providing answers in the search box robs legitimate publishers of traffic. But the industry is so fragmented that a concerted legal action against Google is not possible.

Since this is HN, I expect people are going to start chanting "Die you ad supported publishers or find a new business model. We love Google because it's great for the users to read the answer on Google and not have to visit your ad laden site". I understand this sentiment but don't agree with it. Users love anything that's free. That does not mean Google can steal it and give it to them.

The implicit contract between publishers and Google is that publishers let Google crawl and index their content. In return, Google includes the publisher in their search results so users can find the information they are looking for and publishers get traffic. Outright copying of this information is stealing because it robs publishers of their revenue stream.

Re: Yelp’s Six-Year Conflict with Google

#22

Post by mdasen » Tue, Jul 04, 2017, 8:44 PM UTC

mrunkel wrote: post #13

I find all this hand wringing over Google to be so tiring. Google is doing what is best for it's customers. Be that advertisers and/or searchers. If they stop doing that, they'll lose their market dominance. Last I checked, nobody is forced to use google to search for things, nobody if forced (except for perhaps android users) to use Chrome. I'm not a laissez-faire capitalist by any means, but I don't see that Google…

> If they stop doing that, they'll lose their market dominance.

That's precisely the issue. It can be illegal to use your market dominance in one area (search) to reinforce or create market dominance in other areas. Microsoft had the best operating system and a browser that they wanted people to use. People preferred Netscape, but Microsoft used its OS dominance to kill off Netscape.

It is ok to be dominant in a product. You aren't, however, allowed to use the dominance in one product to gain you dominance in other products. Google has dominance in search, but using that to kill off competitors for their lesser-liked products isn't fair.

> They have achieved their dominance because their services are viewed as "best" by the majority of folks out there.

Their search service is viewed as "best" my most, but that doesn't mean their reviews service is. That's what's at issue. Being the best at one thing shouldn't allow you to stifle people that are better at another thing. That is certainly not best for consumers.

If Google were 20% of search traffic, they could do many things because there's no dominance at issue. Since Google is the vast majority of search traffic, they can effectively eliminate most competitors. Starting a reviews site? Your listings will fall below our own regardless of their merit. Starting a videos site, YouTube alternatives will always be shown first even if it's not what the user is looking for.

YouTube should be popular on its own merit, not based on Google using its search dominance to choke competitors. Google's reviews should be popular on their own merit, not based on Google using its search dominance to kill off Yelp.

I do want to clarify that I'm not saying that Google is guilty of doing this, but that when you get to a certain market dominance, you can kill off competitors that are better than you by starving them rather than by being better than them. It's important that third-parties can compete with Google's non-search services without having Google's search service unreasonably favor Google's non-search services.

Re: Yelp’s Six-Year Conflict with Google

#23

Post by ClassyJacket » Tue, Jul 04, 2017, 8:44 PM UTC

kefka wrote: post #16

Indeed, Google is too big and has a massive effect on the Internet across the whole world. A single capricious decision made by Google/Alphabet can cause dozens of businesses to shutter or fail. And that is a big problem, especially if we care about upstarts and new companies. However, that responsibility they fail to take in consideration except by lawsuit, does not counteract YELP's BaaS - Blackmail as a Service. T…

You're absolutely right. Yelp adds no value the dozens of other review apps don't, they simply succed because they extort and blackmail small businesses. I refuse to install their app and the quicker they die the better.

Re: Yelp’s Six-Year Conflict with Google

#24

Post by benchaney » Tue, Jul 04, 2017, 8:50 PM UTC

falsedan wrote: post #11

it_learnses wrote: post #5

"Jeremy Stoppelman @jeremys Wow Google, congrats on a new low. Consumer searches for Yelp gets "reviews" which are Google Ads." hah, that's fresh coming from an online racketeering company.

I think the point was, you can choose not to use Yelp and your life will fine and dandy; not so much with google.

The opposite is actually true. If you are being slandered on yelp you cannot just choose for it to end. On the other hand you can use another search engine or advertising firm without any problems.

Re: Yelp’s Six-Year Conflict with Google

#25

Post by parthdesai » Tue, Jul 04, 2017, 8:51 PM UTC

redm wrote: post #9

"Mr. Stoppelman feels he has no choice. Like a lot of small internet companies, Yelp lives in a world where one company, Google, accounts for an outsize share of its business, and could destroy it at any time." That sums it up for Yelp and many others, myself included. Combine that reality with the black box that Google is, in many ways, and you have an inaccessible behemoth who's decisions decide the fate of many. G…

> "Mr. Stoppelman feels he has no choice. Like a lot of small internet companies, Yelp lives in a world where one company, Google, accounts for an outsize share of its business, and could destroy it at any time."

Ah the irony. Yelp is the same website that bullied small businesses to pay for positive reviews[1].

[1]http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/yelp-accused-of-bullying-bus...

Re: Yelp’s Six-Year Conflict with Google

#26

Post by tuxracer » Tue, Jul 04, 2017, 8:51 PM UTC

mrunkel wrote: post #13

I find all this hand wringing over Google to be so tiring. Google is doing what is best for it's customers. Be that advertisers and/or searchers. If they stop doing that, they'll lose their market dominance. Last I checked, nobody is forced to use google to search for things, nobody if forced (except for perhaps android users) to use Chrome. I'm not a laissez-faire capitalist by any means, but I don't see that Google…

> nobody if forced (except for perhaps android users) to use Chrome

Unlike iOS you can install different browsers on Android directly from the Play Store. These can actually be different browsers with their own rendering engines not just alternative UIs on top of Chrome. Firefox on Android for example uses the actual Firefox rendering engine, not Chrome.

Re: Yelp’s Six-Year Conflict with Google

#27

Post by AznHisoka » Tue, Jul 04, 2017, 8:52 PM UTC

putlake wrote: post #21

redm wrote: post #9

"Mr. Stoppelman feels he has no choice. Like a lot of small internet companies, Yelp lives in a world where one company, Google, accounts for an outsize share of its business, and could destroy it at any time." That sums it up for Yelp and many others, myself included. Combine that reality with the black box that Google is, in many ways, and you have an inaccessible behemoth who's decisions decide the fate of many. G…

I agree. As a web publisher who depends on advertising for revenue and Google for traffic, things are getting more and more difficult. Google providing answers in the search box robs legitimate publishers of traffic. But the industry is so fragmented that a concerted legal action against Google is not possible. Since this is HN, I expect people are going to start chanting "Die you ad supported publishers or find a ne…

OK, so now that implicit contract changed and says Google can show that information above the organic search results. Given this, publishers do have a choice of blocking Google in their robots.txt.

this is an implicit agreement (not explicit). the agreement changed. publishers still have a chance to respond... dont like it? block google! (its just 1 line in robots.txt) go rely on word of mouth, bing, ads and emailing to get traffic!

dont want to do that? oh i see... well that means you voluntarily agree to the agreement and have no right to complain.

Re: Yelp’s Six-Year Conflict with Google

#28

Post by bhldr » Tue, Jul 04, 2017, 8:53 PM UTC

wannabe_miner wrote: post #4

Unrelated but related, what is it like to work at Yelp? I was recently contacted by them for a position but it didn't inspire confidence. The mention of a "shoestring operation" in this article is making me believe I made the right choice.

As an engineer, it's actually a pretty great employer. I enjoy working there and there's lots of folks who've been there for many years.

Re: Yelp’s Six-Year Conflict with Google

#29

Post by AznHisoka » Tue, Jul 04, 2017, 8:58 PM UTC

redm wrote: post #9

"Mr. Stoppelman feels he has no choice. Like a lot of small internet companies, Yelp lives in a world where one company, Google, accounts for an outsize share of its business, and could destroy it at any time." That sums it up for Yelp and many others, myself included. Combine that reality with the black box that Google is, in many ways, and you have an inaccessible behemoth who's decisions decide the fate of many. G…

It would help if Yelp allowed new, emerging search engines (potential google competitors) to crawl their site. But their robots.txt only allows Google, Bing and a few others to crawl them (https://yelp.com/robots.txt)

allow all crawlers and I would have at least a little sympathy for Yelp.

Re: Yelp’s Six-Year Conflict with Google

#30

Post by the_mitsuhiko » Tue, Jul 04, 2017, 9:00 PM UTC

mrunkel wrote: post #13

I find all this hand wringing over Google to be so tiring. Google is doing what is best for it's customers. Be that advertisers and/or searchers. If they stop doing that, they'll lose their market dominance. Last I checked, nobody is forced to use google to search for things, nobody if forced (except for perhaps android users) to use Chrome. I'm not a laissez-faire capitalist by any means, but I don't see that Google…

> Google is doing what is best for it's customers.

But is it? Because right now I basically can't stop using Google services at this point because they pushed out many others from the market. I would however greatly prefer some competition in the field.