Google to Sell Zagat to The Infatuation, an Upstart Review Site • Hacker News Board

Re: Google to Sell Zagat to The Infatuation, an Upstart Review Site

#51

Post by overcast » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 5:39 PM UTC

buckhx wrote: post #42

whitepoplar wrote: post #36

Question: How does the Infatuation make money? I see they've only raised $3.5mm in seed funding, but over the last few years, they've been blowing up the restaurant review industry.

Our main source of revenue right now is through partnerships with brands who we see as sharing in our values. We have always believed that by providing quality content and by keeping our partnerships no bullsh*t and to brands that gel with us and that we believe our users will legitimately be interested in, our user base would remain loyal and interested in what we and our brand partners have to say. That model has w…

Awesome news, and congrats to the Infatuation team. You guys have been killing it! Question, do you work with local marketers that share the same ideals? I run the largest food and cocktail promotion gig in Rochester, NY, that focuses on only the best. All photography, content, and relationships are handled solely by me. I won't post anything I don't love, so there is no negativity, and my followers expect that level of integrity. The scene has been growing hand over fist here, and it would be killer to get more coverage outside of the area.

https://instagram.com/rocfoodies

https://rocfoodies.com

Re: Google to Sell Zagat to The Infatuation, an Upstart Review Site

#52

Post by nailer » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 5:39 PM UTC

jonknee wrote: post #34

prepend wrote: post #8

This is interesting. What’s the data use agreement like on this sale? Does google get to retain all of Zagat’s historical data? Or is it sold to the Infatuation? They just bought Zagat in 2011, so selling it so quickly seems odd. It’s an undisclosed amount, so I assume it’s at a loss from its $151M purchase. I hope it eventually becomes public knowledge through Google’s SEC filings. If this is just a way to buy deep…

> They just bought Zagat in 2011, so selling it so quickly seems odd. That was 7 years ago...

Exactly - a lot can change in that time. Years ago Zagat was an unplayable boss, now he's a playable character.

Re: Google to Sell Zagat to The Infatuation, an Upstart Review Site

#53

Post by ISL » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 5:44 PM UTC

nix0n wrote: post #39

aphextron wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What precisely are you guys doing to ensure review authenticity? This is the number one reason I ignore all reviews all the internet but Yelp.

Yelp's reviews are probably real, but Yelp also throws out a lot of real reviews, and they do this in a way that will skew the star rating up or down depending on whether the business purchases Yelp ads. Yelp is actually still great because they have the only good database of what businesses are open at what times.

Google Maps seems to have reliable open/closed times (with histograms).

Re: Google to Sell Zagat to The Infatuation, an Upstart Review Site

#54

Post by trevyn » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 5:49 PM UTC

prepend wrote: post #8

This is interesting. What’s the data use agreement like on this sale? Does google get to retain all of Zagat’s historical data? Or is it sold to the Infatuation? They just bought Zagat in 2011, so selling it so quickly seems odd. It’s an undisclosed amount, so I assume it’s at a loss from its $151M purchase. I hope it eventually becomes public knowledge through Google’s SEC filings. If this is just a way to buy deep…

>It would also explain the buy and sell technique used on Boston Dynamics, Moto, and others.

Boston Dynamics was all Andy Rubin, and it didn't really fit when he left and Robotics collapsed as a result, and Moto was for defensive patents for Android (which they kept).

I haven't followed Zagat, but a sibling comment here mentioned it was Marissa Mayer's doing, so that would fit with the Andy / Boston Dynamics pattern.

There is also a PR disadvantage to feeding the idea that "Google owns everything".

Re: Google to Sell Zagat to The Infatuation, an Upstart Review Site

#55

Post by ucaetano » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 5:56 PM UTC

sf_rob wrote: post #28

chatmasta wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they are using the data internally (e.g. for ML training), they can get away with not buying it. They already scrape every website in existence and feed their data to ML training algorithms, it's not like Google needs to pay for a data set just to use it internally.

Publishing something does not make it public domain. I am not a lawyer, but saying they can do anything with what they scrape seems questionable.

I don't think that there's an issue with someone reading 100 reviews of a certain restaurant on the internet, and summarizing them by writing a new review:

"Most people who talked about it mentioned the great salad bar, but said that the fish was sub par. They commented on it being lively and child-friendly"

That's what I'd guess they are doing.

Re: Google to Sell Zagat to The Infatuation, an Upstart Review Site

#56

Post by ucaetano » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 5:58 PM UTC

malchow wrote: post #10

prepend wrote: post #8

This is interesting. What’s the data use agreement like on this sale? Does google get to retain all of Zagat’s historical data? Or is it sold to the Infatuation? They just bought Zagat in 2011, so selling it so quickly seems odd. It’s an undisclosed amount, so I assume it’s at a loss from its $151M purchase. I hope it eventually becomes public knowledge through Google’s SEC filings. If this is just a way to buy deep…

Is data stripping the new asset stripping?

Not really, data is replicable, assets aren't.

So you can buy a company, strip all of its data, and resell for a similar value than you bought it for. You can't do that with asset stripping.

But, on the other hand, if the data striping happens again and again, the company becomes worthless, even if it still has all of the assets and data.

Ah, the wonders of the information economy...

Re: Google to Sell Zagat to The Infatuation, an Upstart Review Site

#57

Post by puzzle » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 5:59 PM UTC

djtriptych wrote: post #30

Pretty cool. I always suspected Google really bought Zagat in the first place because it was easier than evicting them from 111 8th, Google's NYC HQ. Zagat was a tenant when Google bought that building a few years back. Spotify was too. Wonder if there were ever talks of a buyout.

That's not true, Zagat was in Columbus Circle. They moved months after the acquisition.

Spotify was subleasing space from someone else in the building, something that the owners, Google themselves, did not know and most likely did not appreciate.

Re: Google to Sell Zagat to The Infatuation, an Upstart Review Site

#58

Post by majos » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 6:00 PM UTC

timr wrote: post #40

majos wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? I find even Yelp reviews low quality in general, so I use older methods (food forums like Chowhound or eGullet, some bloggers I'm familiar with, sometimes even newspaper critics) to find restaurants. Too many Yelp reviewers take off points for feeling disrespected in odd ways or don't know much about food to begin with. I don't really trust a completely random person's opinion on food, so I prefer going to th…

"Plus Yelp has a bad history of extorting money from businesses by controlling which of their reviews show up." No, they don't. This is a rumor that is often repeated, but is never backed with evidence that goes beyond hearsay. Also, I worked at Yelp, on the systems in question, and I can tell you that it's false.

The evidence against Yelp seems to amount to a (from what I can tell sizeable) population of small business owners who claim that Yelp 1. is extremely aggressive about selling its advertising services (perhaps annoying, but not criminal) and 2. responds to failure to buy these services by filtering or deleting positive reviews.

Now, this evidence exists mostly in hearsay-type form: blog posts, forum posts, huge reddit threads. You can find similar stuff for BBB and Angie's List. There are also a couple thousand FTC complaints against Yelp, at least.

Yelp has turned these attacks away in court, but the (apparent) last ruling on this seemed to come down to an inability on the plaintiffs' side to prove Yelp actually changes review visibility based on advertising [1].

It seems silly to believe random people on the internet over tossed lawsuits and a dropped FTC investigation. But I see this as the likely result of Yelp being cagey about how reviews and advertising interact, and being able to hide behind a policy that promises a scrupulous approach and proprietary algorithms. It's not like I'm using Reddit posts to support anti-vax arguments, small business owners can definitely reason about how Yelp operates from their interactions with it.

[1] https://www.wired.com/2015/11/people-keep-suing-yelp-over-it...

Re: Google to Sell Zagat to The Infatuation, an Upstart Review Site

#59

Post by tmaly » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 6:07 PM UTC

buckhx wrote: post #2

CTO of The Infatuation here. We're excited to get rolling on this and have some really unique challenges ahead to extract Zagat from internal Google technology. Feel free to reach out with any questions. If you want to help us tackle this, check out our openings on our Engineering team: https://www.theinfatuation.com/careers

Will you continue to generate reviews in house, or do you have plans to engage a broader audience who will provide content?

I have always felt the internet 1% rule to be extremely challenging in this respect. I took a stab with my food side project, but getting input has been quite a challenge.

Re: Google to Sell Zagat to The Infatuation, an Upstart Review Site

#60

Post by kolpa » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 6:25 PM UTC

buckhx wrote: post #2

CTO of The Infatuation here. We're excited to get rolling on this and have some really unique challenges ahead to extract Zagat from internal Google technology. Feel free to reach out with any questions. If you want to help us tackle this, check out our openings on our Engineering team: https://www.theinfatuation.com/careers

How does that sort of migration work, at a high level? Will Google run Zagat for you until you can operate it without depending on Google-internal components? Or do you have early-access to the system so you can build your port before the sale completes?