Yelp Is Replacing Restaurants’ Phone Numbers So Grubhub Can Take a Cut • Hacker News Board

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

#231

Post by smush » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 6:32 PM UTC

throw7 wrote: post #146

cevn wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> tiny minimalist Dropbox competitor what is it? I'm lookin for alternatives

I use syncthing.

TL;DR -> Please give Syncthing a try, it does just what it says on the tin and with no fuss once setup.

In the beginning, there was the 3.5" floppy disk, trudged along in my backpack in its little box with the 4 blank ones (which only ever got used by the slackers who forgot their own), used for little notes on the single README.txt featuring a .LOG at the top so each time I opened it, Notepad would insert the time/date.

Then along came the 1GB Kingston DataTraveller flash drive, what an amazing device! It held not only that increasingly read-only README.txt file, but also a portable knock-off of Onenote 2003 which name I forget (Agilix? Wikidpad? I no longer remember)

Then in 2012, Dropbox rolled into my life and I was in hog heaven, getting up to 5G from various referrals before moving in 2013 to Skydrive (now Onedrive) because a recent HTC purchase included 25GB of free storage space in addition to the already commodious 7GB(!) of free sync space. Clearly I want to be offline first, so I'll keep syncing the briefcase on the flashdrive (now a 4GB SanDisk) and carry that last floppy disk...after all if I still have an IBM USB floppy drive, might as well carry the disk right?

Fast forward several years. The 1GB and 4GB flash drive are keeping each other company in the retirement home of the electronics drawer, ready at a moment's notice to hand me a zipped up copy of Sim City 3000 or Timone and Pumba's Jungle Arcade or other such digital hoarder file from old CDs I dare not read any more but still want their contents.

In my pocket is a whopping 32GB Samsung stainless steel drive, and in my bag where the floppy disk used to live in honor is now a SIXTY-FREAKING-FOUR GB SanDisk extreme pro flash drive featuring Hiran's boot CD, DBAN, Ghost, Kali Linux, Peppermint OS, and more at the touch of a fingertip.

But the files? The briefcase has been synced oh, 4 months ago now? These days I don't plug it in as much, the old habit of plugging it in to work, home devices as soon as I log in long gone. Why do that when I can use Syncthing, an amazing tool that syncs the files with any and all devices however you want to slice n dice em. All you gotta do is introduce them with a handshake and boom, files are synced all over the wire, automatically and without being uploaded to Google's, Microsoft's, or Apple's cloud servers for heuristic analysis and advertising targeting.

I have arrived at file portability nirvana, and it is with Syncthing.

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

#232

Post by jammygit » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 6:32 PM UTC

I’ve been avoiding yelp, but it’s pretty easy to forget why until something like this is posted. Gross

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

#233

Post by atmz » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 6:34 PM UTC

cdolan wrote: post #209

atmz wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: I worked on this feature. If you walk in to the restaurant, you don't need to install the app. The app will let you view your live place in line, but you can leave the line/get notified when your table is ready vis SMS. If you want to get in line before you show up the restaurant, you can do that via the app, or the www site, or the mobile site.

Did you work on it as NoWait or at Yelp (formerly NoWait). If you worked on it as the original NoWait, have you seen any changes, positive or negative, now that the feature is under Yelp's umbrella?

I worked on it from the Yelp side during the intitial partnership/integration. So, I can't comment on the NoWait perspective, but I will say that almost all of the NoWait software team is still working at Yelp 2+ years post-aquisition.

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

#234

Post by Balgair » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 6:35 PM UTC

3JPLW wrote: post #165

Balgair wrote: post #111

>“I definitely implore people to forgo the three seconds of convenience to help neighborhood businesses,” he said. Interesting way to end the article. I think we have all seen lines around the block for the new hotness in local resturants. If the owner is trying to get people in the door like this, then it is likely that these apps are not the culprit in the issues that the owner is facing. In the article, grubhub po…

How does your anecdote of dining at a hot new restaurant refute the challenges restaurants are facing with GrubHub's fees getting tacked onto typical phone-in orders?

Sorry about that, I should have probably broken that up into two comments. Thanks!

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

#235

Post by drstewart » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 6:38 PM UTC

dhritzkiv wrote: post #68

icanhasfay wrote: post #44

(Serious Q) What other good alternatives are out there for Yelp?

I use Foursquare and really like it (compared to Yelp). As it's crowd-sourced, the data can be iffy (missing hours, phone numbers) in some lower density regions, but that hasn't been a huge drawback.

Loved Foursquare, but stopped using it when it seemed all the recommendations were a few years old. Even now I go into it and most reviews/recommendations are from 2014. Shame it fell off.

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

#236

Post by kbenson » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 6:40 PM UTC

ilikehurdles wrote: post #117

kbenson wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or... just informally incentivize employees to do the wrong thing and make sure they have (or refuse to remove availability of) the tools they use to do so. If yelp has salespeople that can alter reviews or how they show in any way, and those salespeople are incentivized to hit sales numbers, some subset of them will use the tools at their disposal to facilitate their sales. In this theoretical scenario, is Yelp exto…

>If yelp has salespeople that can alter reviews or how they show in any way, and those salespeople are incentivized to hit sales numbers, some subset of them will use the tools at their disposal to facilitate their sales. I've been threatened by SEO sales people that they can hurt my site's search rankings if I don't sign up for their service. There are robocallers[1] that pretend to be Google employees making these…

I'm sure they probably are at some times. My only point was to say that there are situations where a statement from Yelp to the contrary doesn't really mean something isn't happening, with or without Yelp's informal approval, so it doesn't necessarily put the discussion to bed. It's just one more point of reference, and should be seen as such when people are making their own assessment of the situation.

Someone hearing complaints of Yelp coercing people shouldn't immediately believe it or believe it explains the whole situation, and neither should someone hearing Yelp's response. They are both possible insights into the actual reality of the situation, which may accurately describe part or al of that reality to varying degrees, and should be seen as exactly that.

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

#237

Post by marcosdumay » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 6:40 PM UTC

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #120

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> have convinced me that simple file sync, which is all I ever wanted from them, is not enough to sustain a company. Is the problem that it's not enough to sustain a company, or that it's not enough to sustain investors who unreasonable expect constant growth? I'd posit that Dropbox has a sustainable business, and that their changes will likely hurt the long-term viability of that business.

Long-term viability is a funny thing financially. If a company is worth their discounted future earnings, then a long lasting low number and a quickly dying high number might be the same. As far as investors are concerned, being a long-term viable business (in the usual sense) might not matter, even with the big-picture view.

Add into that the unwillingness of public companies to share dividends and we are into some great Wonderland style mathematics.

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

#238

Post by cloverich » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 6:46 PM UTC

braythwayt wrote: post #173

lazerwalker wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't necessarily frame that as an inevitability of Dropbox as a product, as much as an inevitability of the traditional VC funding model. It's likely you could build a very healthy business selling people file syncing — I personally use a tiny minimalist Dropbox competitor that seems to be doing just fine. The hypergrowth demanded by investors when you take on $1.7B in funding is what's the challenge.

A bit of a tangent, but it feels to me like using wads of funding to try to create hypergrowth is a good fit for "winner-take-all" markets, like those with network effects. Social media fits. Syncing documents, maybe not-so-much. So Dropbox invests in areas where there are possible network effects, like collaborating on documents. Because that's what fits its funding model. But simple file syncing... This is not a wi…

> But simple file syncing... This is not a winner-take-all market.

On its own, probably not. But you could imagine several avenues they could naturally grow into, that would _eventually_ turn them into the equivalent of a full OS. Its not something I would personally bet on, but also not something that, if it worked out, would totally surprise me. E.g. maybe _they_ should have invented Google Docs, and then...

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

#239

Post by RandallBrown » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 6:48 PM UTC

kevin_b_er wrote: post #11

Amazing. Yelp redirects the customer who intended to look up their number in Yelp, redirects them GrubHub. GrubHub then grifts the restaurant for it. These online order companies are grifters. With tricks and sneaky fees, they exploit the restaurants, they exploit the customers, and if delivery is involved, they'll exploit the driver too.

Grubhub isn't grifting anyone. These restaurants have to sign up with Grubhub for the phone referral to do anything.

It works both ways though. Restaurants will regularly put up menu items with titles like "Call in for discount for free delivery" or something like that so they can subvert the Grubhub fees while still getting the Grubhub traffic.

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

#240

Post by splonk » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 6:49 PM UTC

quietbritishjim wrote: post #36

tfha wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh. I remember we used to use Yelp to find the best restaurants in a city. It worked incredibly well. It doesn't anymore, but Google maps is not better. For example, I tried to use Google maps to find good buffalo wings in Brooklyn. But, the top suggestion didn't even have buffalo sauce on the menu! Just soy! I tend to blame SEO first and ads / paid promotion second.

If you're looking for good restaurants in a city, TripAdvisor is probably your best bet. It does have the downside of terrible location-based search though (what decent restaurants are within 50m of my current position?).

TA is pretty close to last on my list for restaurant search. The top of every ranking in any even mildly touristy city is going to be spammed to hell and back. It's basically a list of "where do tourists go who can be preferentially selected into leaving a review?"