Pug and elephant: Google wanted to buy Yelp, but as a result, "stole" its content
Yelp is a website for searching local services, such as restaurants or barbershops, with the ability to add and view ratings and reviews of these services. For popular businesses, there are hundreds of reviews. For reviewers on the site elements of a social network are provided.
The largest market for the company has become the United States. Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman believes that Google is too aggressively monopolizing the market, breaking laws. On the other hand, the Internet giant frankly lobbies its interests in Washington. CEO Yelp compares the aggressive behavior of the IT giant with a mental disorder.
In a conversation with Re / code, Stoppelman recalled a telling story with George Mason University. Google donated $ 760 thousand for the university staff to later publish studies refuting the violations of antitrust laws.
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Stoppelman also drew a parallel between the history of Yelp - Google and Novell - Microsoft back in the 2000th year. Despite the fact that at that time Microsoft had already been charged with illegal monopolization of the market, it managed to strike Novell a blow from which it had not recovered.
Yelp CEO believes that Google is betting on mobile Internet technologies and is trying to "strangle" or buy other players in the mobile market.
“Google has completely lost its mind,” said Stoppelman. According to their logic, it is necessary to depreciate local content in the eyes of users and to impose on them the dominant role of web content and Internet technologies in general. And for this, it is vital to maintain monopoly and dominance in the market.
In 2009, Google offered to buy Yelp for $ 550 million, but Stoppelman refused the deal. Later, the IT giant agreed to cooperate with the service and added Yelp reviews to Google Maps. However, Stoppelman later abandoned the partnership, after Google Maps, in his words, “began to look more and more like Yelp pages,” and the company began to add reviews of its own production.
Left without content from Yelp, Google came to a “brilliant” solution: “If we do not have a license for it, we will simply steal it”. Under theft, Stoppelman means the indexing of the Yelp pages by the Google search robot. According to the head of the service, the IT giant uses this information to develop its own directions.
“Many people think [of Google] the same thing as me. But few people are able to talk about it openly, ”complains Stoppelman.
In August, Megamind wrote that the European Commission is continuing antitrust investigations into Google’s market behavior. In April, the company was accused of unfair promotion of its own services by distorting search results. Representatives of the European Commission sent out a questionnaire to the participants of the European market in order to find out their opinion on the changes in Google policy since 2010. Also, respondents were asked to copy their advertising agreements with Google over the past four years.
Another form is designed to find out how often Google copies images and other content of competitors. In this questionnaire, respondents should explain to what extent they control the use of their materials posted on Google Images.
CEO Yelp hopes that the US Federal Trade Commission will reconsider its attitude to Google - the agency has already announced that it intends to check Android’s monopoly in the market.
But the whole “piquancy” of the situation lies in the fact that Yelp itself is “not without sin”: the Federal Trade Commission (FCS) received more than 2 thousand complaints about Yelp from 2008 to 2014, writes The Wall Street Journal. Entrepreneurs complained about the opaque pricing of advertising campaigns and how the service works with negative reviews. One of the plaintiffs after lengthy trials with service representatives found that his company’s name on Yelp had been changed to something offensive.
In January 2015, the investigation of the FCS against Yelp was closed and no action was taken.
The largest market for the company has become the United States. Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman believes that Google is too aggressively monopolizing the market, breaking laws. On the other hand, the Internet giant frankly lobbies its interests in Washington. CEO Yelp compares the aggressive behavior of the IT giant with a mental disorder.
In a conversation with Re / code, Stoppelman recalled a telling story with George Mason University. Google donated $ 760 thousand for the university staff to later publish studies refuting the violations of antitrust laws.
')
Stoppelman also drew a parallel between the history of Yelp - Google and Novell - Microsoft back in the 2000th year. Despite the fact that at that time Microsoft had already been charged with illegal monopolization of the market, it managed to strike Novell a blow from which it had not recovered.
Yelp CEO believes that Google is betting on mobile Internet technologies and is trying to "strangle" or buy other players in the mobile market.
“Google has completely lost its mind,” said Stoppelman. According to their logic, it is necessary to depreciate local content in the eyes of users and to impose on them the dominant role of web content and Internet technologies in general. And for this, it is vital to maintain monopoly and dominance in the market.
In 2009, Google offered to buy Yelp for $ 550 million, but Stoppelman refused the deal. Later, the IT giant agreed to cooperate with the service and added Yelp reviews to Google Maps. However, Stoppelman later abandoned the partnership, after Google Maps, in his words, “began to look more and more like Yelp pages,” and the company began to add reviews of its own production.
Left without content from Yelp, Google came to a “brilliant” solution: “If we do not have a license for it, we will simply steal it”. Under theft, Stoppelman means the indexing of the Yelp pages by the Google search robot. According to the head of the service, the IT giant uses this information to develop its own directions.
“Many people think [of Google] the same thing as me. But few people are able to talk about it openly, ”complains Stoppelman.
In August, Megamind wrote that the European Commission is continuing antitrust investigations into Google’s market behavior. In April, the company was accused of unfair promotion of its own services by distorting search results. Representatives of the European Commission sent out a questionnaire to the participants of the European market in order to find out their opinion on the changes in Google policy since 2010. Also, respondents were asked to copy their advertising agreements with Google over the past four years.
Another form is designed to find out how often Google copies images and other content of competitors. In this questionnaire, respondents should explain to what extent they control the use of their materials posted on Google Images.
CEO Yelp hopes that the US Federal Trade Commission will reconsider its attitude to Google - the agency has already announced that it intends to check Android’s monopoly in the market.
But the whole “piquancy” of the situation lies in the fact that Yelp itself is “not without sin”: the Federal Trade Commission (FCS) received more than 2 thousand complaints about Yelp from 2008 to 2014, writes The Wall Street Journal. Entrepreneurs complained about the opaque pricing of advertising campaigns and how the service works with negative reviews. One of the plaintiffs after lengthy trials with service representatives found that his company’s name on Yelp had been changed to something offensive.
In January 2015, the investigation of the FCS against Yelp was closed and no action was taken.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/297464/
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