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Yelp's Six-Year Grudge Against Google (nytimes.com)
Yelp has become Google's most tenacious pest, and despite the public outcries the crowd-sourced reviews website has seen little mercy over the years. From an NYTimes article: For six years, Jeremy Stoppelman's (chief executive of Yelp) company has been locked in a campaign on three continents to get antitrust regulators to punish Google, Yelp's larger, richer and more politically connected competitor. He has testified before Congress, written op-ed columns and used Twitter to bash Google's behavior (paywalled). Google wasn't always a rival. At one point, it was a suitor. But out of that union that never happened was born a mighty grudge, perhaps even an obsession. At one point, Yelp held a hackathon to create a sort of alternate-universe Google, the better for it to explain Google's ways to regulators. And then you have Luther Lowe. Mr. Lowe, Yelp's vice president for government relations, once spent $3,000 on a stuffed elephant, because it had been knit by Europe's antitrust chief. Unlike Google, whose office is full of artwork and free food, Yelp's Washington presence is just a rented co-working space. So Mr. Lowe keeps the elephant at Yelp's San Francisco headquarters, where there is more room. "This is a shoestring operation," he said. But after years of trying and failing, that operation has finally landed a good punch. Last Tuesday, the European Union fined Google $2.7 billion -- the largest antitrust fine in its history -- for unfairly favoring its own services over those of its rivals. The fine was related to Google's shopping service, so strictly speaking it had nothing to do with the Yelp-Google dispute, which is part of a separate investigation into local search. Still, Yelp and other American technology companies pushed hard to get regulators to issue a bold condemnation of Google's behavior toward competitors, signing a letter that accused Google of "destroying jobs and stifling innovation." And by affirming that Google is the dominant company in online search -- something most people take for granted -- Tuesday's decision is likely to help Yelp's case.
I see Yelp quite often in Google search results.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
We want to be bought by Google.
That's it.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
I've posted reviews of restaurants which were 100% honest and quite objective, only to see the review I posted "disappear" a day or two after I posted.
This has happened multiple times, with different restaurants. I asked a restaurant owner about this and he told me it was indeed possible to "make unfavorable reviews disappear". He smiled as he said this, but it didn't keep the place he owned from going out of business about a year later.
For me, Yelp has zero credibility.
I believe it is smarter to simply ask the locals where THEY like to eat, and do this in real life, not on some website.
Many dubious reviews
Allegations of "Payola"
Allegations of business shakedowns
Too many novices rate everything 5 stars, or 1 star
In the grander scheme of things I'm not sure we should take Company B's advice that Company A is wrong and should be penalized, merely because Company B writes op-eds and sweet talks regulators. AKA ~ Regulatory Capture.
Yelp is just out to destroy Google since they are the competition. I'm not defending Google either though.
Yelp hires sales people to bully restaurants into paying for advertising and other premium services on its network, threatening to essentially blackball them if they don't comply. It's really abhorrent behaviour. Google may be the big behemoth here, but as far as I know they have never pulled any of this kind of crap. Yelp is like Facebook—the customer is the product. They aren't actually interested in providing accurate, unbiased reviews. They are interested in selling advertising and mining people's data which they can then sell for profit. I liked and used Yelp in its early days, like most of us, but would highly suggest moving away from it now as much possible.
It is the most useless site ever. I see is show up in search results all the time. I wish I could just block it. Fuckers like this should be taken out and beat to death with a brick. Fucking worthless piece of shit Jeremy Stoppelman. Piece of shit wants to the gov't to force everyone else to use his shitty product because he thinks he should be rich. Fuck off you worthless piece of garbage.
Their business model is 'Pay us to make the bad reviews go away.'
I don't know why anybody would ever trust Yelp. It's like trusting the 'Better Business Bureau'...Chump.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'