[thereisnospork]

How is that not fraud though? They are advertising a manipulated review score. The 1 stars aren't bots, they are people. Would it be legal for e.g. yelp to remove a string of bad reviews stemming from a catering company giving a wedding food poisoning?

[animal_spirits]

I'm not saying I condone what happened. I just see people claiming corruption, and I personally doubt that. I think its more along the form of "lets remove these reviews for now and analyze them tomorrow"

[utkugenc]

Corruption is a tricky subject. Pawns of a dictatorship, a mafia or any hierarchical corrupt structure... They might not be aware of what's actually going on but that doesn't change the fact that the structure is corrupt. Whatever caused this, Google's guidelines, its business practices, its investor relations, is corrupt.