[face_mcgace]

Hmm these comments really bother me - people seem to miss the point that Google is using its monopoly power to block out competition. This concept is very, very frightening and we should all be worried. This is no different than when railroads would block competition and promote their own products.

[tossaway1]

Doesn't Yelp have a reputation for much shadier business practices (i.e. extortion)? Maybe they're not a very sympathetic underdog in this fight.

[face_mcgace]

Yea perhaps - I'm not really defending Yelp as much as I'm worried about Google. I think this extends beyond just Yelp into the wider market (hotels.com, tripadvisor, paid search results, etc).

[ocdtrekkie]

Yelp is definitely not a sympathetic party, but that doesn't invalidate or weaken their claim. Particularly if, as they claim, Google is specifically violating an agreement with the FTC.

[sitkack]

Yelp is indeed sht company and needs to be investigated for its own shakedown techniques. But this doesn't mean that Google isn't behaving in an anti-competitive way.

Side note, Yelp literally called my partner who ran PR for non profits art org and asked to be paid $$ or else competitors ads would run on their page. Literal words. One would pay for NOTHING except not having competitors getting promoted on your own pages.

Partner laughed and hung up.

[buckhx]

I'm not a Yelp sympathizer, but this does pretty clearly look like a violation on Google's side. Building up local content is hard and expensive and to represent someone else's content as their own is pretty unethical. If Google wants to present Yelp's content, they need to come up with a deal or grow their own photography content the hard way.

[ocdtrekkie]

FWIW, Google has been building their own content library of photos of local businesses. Android phones these days actually request users share photos they take with Google for inclusion into their Places content. Not sure which app/service is responsible for it, but I hear a lot of people talk about it.

[Ajedi32]

> Not sure which app/service is responsible for it

Google Maps. It also asks questions sometimes like "Does this place only accept cash?" or "Is this place wheelchair accessible?"

I think recently they even added a feature that lets people ask their own questions which then get answered by people who recently visited the place in question.