That sounds absolutely insane. Doesn't Google have any way to dispute the business ownership? Can I take over any business on the maps by just registering a domain that contains the business name?
It is absolutely insane that organizations are weaponizing this.
> Doesn't Google have any way to dispute the business ownership?
I can only speak for the US and it’s been a few years since I’ve done it, but yes Google does have a way. You can report an issue, and “claim” a business. Google will literally send a postcard with a unique ID to the registered physical address, and whoever gets that postcard can take ownership.
> Can I take over any business on the maps by just registering a domain that contains the business name?
Absolutely not (at least legally I assume). It’s probably trademark infringement and potentially fraud to misrepresent that business, and also Google has other methods to verify ownership (see above).
> You can report an issue, and “claim” a business. Google will literally send a postcard with a unique ID to the registered physical address, and whoever gets that postcard can take ownership.
When you say "registered address", do you mean the actual business registered address (as in on Companies House in the UK, for example) or the address which was used to register the business with Google? Because if it's the latter, I think I see a problem ...
The "address" in question here is the location on Google Maps. I managed a few locations for a business and verified them this way. Google would frequently ignore our own posted opening/closing hours and phone numbers in favour of whatever some random user provided under "Suggest an Edit". Horrible system, and support requests just ended up at some Google contractor's inbox in India, where they request to have video calls at 3AM ET to verify our identity (again).
> Because if it's the latter, I think I see a problem ...
Believe it or not, someone spent at least a few hours thinking about this.
The address is physical address that a customer would go to when they look up the business on the map. If it's a restaurant, it's the address that has the tables and food and drinks.
It certainly sounds like they would be sending it to the address provided by the scammer. The issue is their system assumes the first person to interact with it is trustworthy: gives a real phone number and address. If that first contact with Google was MITM'd, they seem to have no way to develop an un-compromised relationship with the real entity.
In Germany, everybody and their siblings usually ask for a recent copy of the trade certificate of registration--it actually is quite annoying. Google could do the same.
I don't think it does. The postcard should go to the place where the customers go, so for a restaurant its the place with the tables and the food and stuff.
If the address is different than the address of the shop-owner, then how would a user who uses google maps get to the shop? And why wouldn't the shop owner just create a new, correct listing?
> Can I take over any business on the maps by just registering a domain that contains the business name?
yes, as long as the business doesn't have that already. And that's the point - many small restaurants, takeaways etc simply don't have a website because they think they don't need one, until they're fucked by Lieferando.
They're following the usual VC pattern: it's more profitable to ask for forgiveness instead of approval.
Plus, many restaurant owners are immigrants, and undocumented/underpaid labor is blooming as well. The last thing they want is to attract the eyes of the government.
I googled the name as I was unfamiliar with it, but immediately recognized the orange logo in search results.
Their entire business model seems to be centered around extorting businesses. I stopped giving them money after they inaccurately posted that a certain restaurant delivers to my location and got a phonecall from the place that this was the case so I agreed to pay extra to fulfill the order anyway, because Lieferando certainly wouldn't take responsibility.
Nowadays I use them only for discovery, but call the place directly or use the webpage if the business provides online ordering.
It appears that their initial value proposition to businesses was substituting delivery services so that restaurants could scale that up without hiring more staff. Of course enshittification made that service worse than just walking/driving/taking public transport there.
A year or two ago when I was doing some searching in Maps for trails to hike in Hawaii, I noticed that if a trail didn't have an "official" website i.e. pointing to a local government page, in several cases a certain photographer had put his website into that spot. And later I discovered he had done this not only in Hawaii but several trails in Utah as well. It would not surprise me if he's hit up hundreds of trails for free advertising via Google's lack of vetting.
I reported it, of course, (as someone else mentioned, Suggest an Edit) and they got changed, but I haven't checked to see if he changed them back.
It is absolutely insane that organizations are weaponizing this.
> Doesn't Google have any way to dispute the business ownership?
I can only speak for the US and it’s been a few years since I’ve done it, but yes Google does have a way. You can report an issue, and “claim” a business. Google will literally send a postcard with a unique ID to the registered physical address, and whoever gets that postcard can take ownership.
> Can I take over any business on the maps by just registering a domain that contains the business name?
Absolutely not (at least legally I assume). It’s probably trademark infringement and potentially fraud to misrepresent that business, and also Google has other methods to verify ownership (see above).