Yelp Files New EU Complaint Against Google Over Search Dominance (ft.com)

Yelp has filed a complaint with the EU's antitrust watchdog against Google, arguing that the search company has abused its dominance in local search and pressuring Brussels to launch new charges against the tech giant, Financial Times reported Tuesday. From the report: European antitrust authorities fined Google $2.8B in June 2017 for favouring its own shopping service over rival offerings in its search results. Google denied wrongdoing and has appealed that decision. Now Yelp, which provides user ratings, reviews and other information about local businesses, wants Margrethe Vestager, the EU Competition Commissioner, to take action against Google for similar alleged abuse in the local search market, according to a copy of the complaint seen by the Financial Times. The move comes days after Yelp founder Jeremy Stopplelman appeared on 60 Minutes to talk about Google's search monopoly. Here's the exchange he had with reporter Steve Kroft: Jeremy Stoppelman: If I were starting out today, I would have no shot of building Yelp. That opportunity has been closed off by Google and their approach.
Steve Kroft: In what way?
Jeremy Stoppelman: Because if you provide great content in one of these categories that is lucrative to Google, and seen as potentially threatening, they will snuff you out.
Steve Kroft: What do you mean snuff you out?
Jeremy Stoppelman: They will make you disappear. They will bury you.

Comments

Yelp is obnoxious...

[b0s0z0ku]

They don't let you view full review for a business on a mobile browser, instead forcing you to "get the app." There are workarounds, but there's no reason why I should be nudged to get an app to view info that's otherwise freely available on the Web. Unless they like to track "customer" locations of course, and monetize the data.

Re:Screw Yelp

[Anonymous Coward]

Great conspiracy theory! Five stars.

Yelp's abuse of businesses has been pretty widely documented for a quite some time now.

But, if you chose to trust them (even though you know nothing about how they do business) then be my guest.

They stole what we were trying to steal!

[holophrastic]

This is just demented. Yelp has been destroying search results for a living. I used to be able to search for a local restaurant, and find the website for said local restaurant. Now, I get to wade through directory-site after directory-site, with the actual local restaurant's web-site way down the list.

Yelp is upset that google doesn't list them as high? I'm upset that google doesn't list the actual website as high.

Maybe google should push yelp, and every other directory listing site, to the bottom of the list, under actual businesses.

Think about it. When was the last time you were searching and actually wanted to find a directory listing? The search results ARE the directory listing. I don't need a listing of listings. I want a listing of results.

This is why I don't use google. I'm not interested in results of big businesses. I'm not looking for big businesses. I never had any trouble finding big businesses. I'm looking for the needle, not for the haystack.

Think about this one. Ever search for a television, or other big appliance? Did you need google to suggest best buy, walmart, and a dozen other huge outlets that you know about? No you didn't. You needed google to help you find the small outlets, that don't advertise to you with millions of dollars of marketing budgets.

Thanks google. You're no better than a subway ad.

Forget obnoxious

[rsilvergun]

the entire thing has an air of mafiosa about it. They've been caught numerous times selling their services on the basis of "If you know what's good for you". They're upset because if they can't put a bad review at the top of Google's search results they don't have a business model.

Re:Yelp is a protection racket. Extortion

[Anonymous Coward]

And you know why?

So they can collect your phone number, device ID, IMSI/IMEI, call history, text messages, contacts, browser ID, potentially browsing history and then sell that information.

The ONLY reason companies want you to download their app is so they can steal your personally identifiable information and then sell it.