[jwelten]

Interesting approach. The annual churn stat seems brutal, I imagine that gets worse in certain categories (restaurants, pop-ups, seasonal businesses).

How do you handle conflicting signals? E.g., a business shows as open on Google, closed on Yelp, and the website returns a 404. Is there a confidence score in the API response or is it binary (exists/doesn't)

[ymarkov]

We have models which take all of this into account when producing the verdict. For enterprise clients we emit a calibrated confidence score. With public api we decided to start simpler. Also, we are not using Google data. I’m not a lawyer, but doing that for any maps-related company is simply against Google’s terms of use

[gzread]

FWIW it may be legal to break terms of use

[sbinnee]

Interesting. Can you elaborate more on that? I was wondering the same thing with other providers, if I can scrape data from their platforms. On what grounds do you think it might be okay?

[gzread]

On the grounds that there's no law that says someone can put some instructions on their website and you have to follow those instructions.

You should consult a lawyer just in case there is such an obscure law, but I don't think there is. Browsing a website doesn't create a contract between you and the website operator, even if the operator says it does.

[ymarkov]

It doesn't fit into our plans of building this

[gzread]

Fair enough. Just remember that in case terms of use bother you in the future. Consult your company's lawyer before doing it.

[ymarkov]

Completely agree - we have been in constant communication with them