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

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

#241

Post by sarah180 »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #204
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.

This was one of the biggest takeaways from the "Startup podcast". If you haven't heard it, it details Alex Blumberg (of this American Life fame) attempts to create a company producing high quality long form podcasts. At one point he and his partner are getting excited that they are on the road to profitability in 6 months. One of their VCs gets upset by this saying that targeting profitability is a sure way to end up…

The VC isn't exactly wrong about this. If you want a valuation in the hundreds of millions or billions, your goal is to figure out how to grow fast and capture defensible territory in a market. Profit is less important than growth—as long as you have a path to profit based on that growth.

If you're not aiming for this kind of territory, you're not really compatible with the VC financial model, which is designed around high risk and high reward. 30–40% of startups end up in liquidation, and 95% never meet their projections. Unless some your successful companies have fantastic returns, your fund will fail.

This is something you should understand before you take VC money.

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

#242

Post by szatkus »

kraig wrote: post #219
ryandrake wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard you can do it quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem.

what is this 1992

FTP doesn't even support secure transfer, right?

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

#243

Post by splonk »

rcpt wrote: post #64
quietbritishjim wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?).

Also chowhound but it's not always up to date

Chowhound basically got destroyed a few years ago when it got acquired and redesigned into an unusable mess, and now traffic has cratered. Some of the regulars split off into new sites - HungryOnion (mostly SF Bay) and FoodTalkCentral (mostly LA), but neither seems to have the critical mass that Chowhound used to have that made it a useful global resource.

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

#244

Post by nrmitchi »

asdff wrote: post #220
mabbo wrote: post #142

It feels as though much of tech has gone from helping people accomplish their goals efficiently to a business model of extracting rents while providing no or little value. In this example, what benefit is GrubHub providing to anyone? The person used Yelp solely to look up the phone number of a restaurant. GrubHub deserves 15% of his order for that? Why, because they made a deal to give X% of it to Yelp, and convinced…

To me, this is a sign of grubhub/insert copycat delivery service circling the drain, trying to extract whatever cash they can get before the inevitable. Anecdata, but among my peers people sort by delivery fee or try to game the system for a new user discount. Delivery fees can easily be $7 now which is like buying another entire portion at some restaurants. Personally, I use grubhub a lot--as a menu to look at for w…

I dont want to cycle back to the content of the article (and parent comment), but is this not exactly the behaviour that these dark patterns are attempting to capture? They (both Grubhub in the past, and Yelp now) have been caught providing "alternative" restaurant phone numbers so that your order, despite being delivered over the phone to the restaurant "directly", is still attributed back to Grubhub. They claim their fee from the restaurant just as if you purchased through the app itself, even though they were not in the transaction process at all.

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

#245

Post by dkonofalski »

ilikehurdles wrote: post #24
kadabra9 wrote: post #12

Yelp is such a slimy company. First they wall off their mobile web reviews to try to force you to download their POS app, they have the whole extortion racket going trying to strongarm restaurants into paying for advertising, and now this. Friendly reminder - if you are on mobile and trying to read a Yelp review and don't want to download their app, simply hold refresh, click "request desktop site" and it will load t…

https://www.yelp-support.com/article/Does-Yelp-extort-small-... I've kind of gotten tired of diving into the whole "yelp extorted my brother's cousin's friend's coworker's business for better ratings" anecdotal story schtick so I'm just going to link the above -- or are you suggesting they're getting away with lying on official communication? If yelp is altering reviews for paying clients, please show the evidence as…

This is where the nuance of their scumminess comes in and where you're either ignoring or are ignorant of it. Yes, they can say that they're not "deleting" or "altering" reviews because that's not what they're doing. What they're doing is sorting by "Yelp Sort" and listing "Recommended" reviews. If you look at any Yelp business page, you'll see a tiny little link at the bottom that says "See reviews that aren't Recommended". They claim that these reviews are hidden behind this wall because they're from users whose reviews are biased or who don't have enough patterns to be "trusted" but this is literally just their way of hiding the reviews that people don't pay for. Since every single one of those terms is subjective, they can change what constitutes a "recommended" review and be completely subjective about why one review is "trusted" and another isn't. It's completely up to them and they totally line up with whether or not a company pays for Yelp's "services".

It's a lot like the BBB. No one has to pay to be listed by the BBB but you can pay for the BBB to "arbitrate" disputes between consumers and your business when someone posts a strike against you on their site. You're just paying for them to contact the customer and hide their bad review.

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

#246

Post by rkho »

alephnan wrote: post #139
habosa wrote: post #61

Yelp 5 years ago was a truly valuable service. You could go anywhere (in America) and find good food. Then they lost focus. The app has not improved an ounce since then (seriously why is 'open now' not a default filter) and they've spent a lot of time doing shady things or complaining about other companies. They've tried to get into reservations, delivery, and non-food services but with half-assed attempts at each. T…

It incorporated elements of delight, too, like a rocket ship that showed when you scrolled the page. I feel these lighthearted things are symptomatic of a product-driven culture, or at least a culture that empowered engineers to add Easter eggs. Now that its sales driven, I’m not sure that jives well with recruiting engineering talent.

I remember they added the "has Pokestop" tag when Pokemon Go first released. Was a fun addition.

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

#247

Post by la_barba »

CydeWeys wrote: post #166
la_barba wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose if the app provided a better experience, then it wouldn't be user-hostile.

Right away, the fact that it requires downloading and installing an app (which you then have to log in to) leaves it pretty far behind in the "better user experience" race vs a mobile website that just works. It's hard to catch up from that deficit. I don't bother with the Yelp app anymore because I'm sick and tired of having to re-download and re-log in to every app (which can be painful since I don't reuse password…

I guess it depends on your POV. I haven't found a mobile website that I liked using. The touch/swipe/double-tap experience is always janky, sometimes you want to zoom in on a map, but it zooms the entire page, etc, etc. Maybe if it was just text with no interactivity, then being a mobile website wouldn't matter. Personally I don't mind spending a couple of minutes installing an app if its useful.

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

#248

Post by deogeo »

dymk wrote: post #169
mabbo wrote: post #142

It feels as though much of tech has gone from helping people accomplish their goals efficiently to a business model of extracting rents while providing no or little value. In this example, what benefit is GrubHub providing to anyone? The person used Yelp solely to look up the phone number of a restaurant. GrubHub deserves 15% of his order for that? Why, because they made a deal to give X% of it to Yelp, and convinced…

If somebody is willing to pay the GrubHub fee, then they’re worth it. Really basic supply and demand, even if you personally don’t find the service useful. Yelp is still my go-to as an index of nearby restaurants and bars.

They're worth it only because without paying them protection money, your restaurant gets no visibility due to overcrowded marketing by other restaurants that do use GrubHub. Without them, or without Yelp, some other yellow-pages equivalent would be used, and the same total number of orders would be placed.

They are literally parasites.

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

#249

Post by la_barba »

couchand wrote: post #153
la_barba wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose if the app provided a better experience, then it wouldn't be user-hostile.

It needs to not just be better. It would need to be better in ways that aren't achievable with the alternative, and sufficiently better that it justifies the cost in terms of space and management requirements imposed.

Sure, and different people make different trade-offs. I don't like using mobile websites, because to me, the interactivity when it comes to touch/swipe/zoom interactions, or edge-swipes etc is always a little janky compared to a proper app. If its a website that I use a lot, I'd rather just have the app than deal with the mobile website.

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

#250

Post by soup10 »

tempsy wrote: post #184

Makes me think really hard about tech’s blind adoration for the “PayPal mafia.” I find myself seeing more instances of soul crushing amoral behavior from this group of entrepreneurs than just about any other group.

It's worth pointing out that Google shamelessly cloned Yelp and funnels everyone into using their clone when they search for restaurants. If Yelp is in desperate spot its because Google put them there.
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