Comments on: Google’s Zagat buy could give search critics more ammo

By: mikato

mikato — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 19:01:42 +0000

If the local taco truck does well at what it does, then what’s wrong with it getting five stars too? I personally don’t like star ratings that place extra weight on restaurants that charge more, or have a fancier setting. That doesn’t make sense to me. What if you’re in the mood for taco truck food today? Is it not possible to have a 5 star experience at a low budget place?

By: Michael Yunkin

Michael Yunkin — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 22:28:11 +0000

This is entirely unrelated to Net Neutrality. Google does not provide internet service. Yes, they could show favoritism in search results or for Chrome/Android users, but that also has nothing to do with Net Neutrality.

By: Joe the Coder

Joe the Coder — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 19:24:56 +0000

I don’t understand how the consumers are hurt by this. Providing high quality reviews of restaurants is a good thing. And if it’s linked to maps, even better. I’m a long term customer of Zagat and prefer their reviews to yelp and all the other reviews out there. Yelp is horrible – the local taco truck gets the same rating as a 5* restaurant. Making Zagat reviews broadly available is 1000X better for the consumer. I presume you won’t have to pay for them so it’s a true value add to the consumer. I hope this spurs yelp to improve their rating system but I fear all it will do is cause them to hire lots of lawyers.

By: David

David — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 23:07:45 +0000

These critics are payed for by competitors. There is no such thing as “search neutrality” and here are the expert options about the ridiculousness of claiming otherwise: http://nextdigitaldecade.com/contents

By: Mike M

Mike M — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 22:24:56 +0000

There is nothing wrong with Google pursuing a vertical integration strategy. Look at Apple. They are in the software phone/computer and even chip business. Google is dong vertical integration by buying Motorola. What’s wrong with getting into the content creation business too?

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 18:38:05 +0000

All this really shows is that anti-trust lawsuits are to protect companies, not consumers.

By: Paul

Paul — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 18:35:05 +0000

And I doubt that Google will be shaking down the restaurants for advertising, offering to hide bad reviews only if restaurateurs pay up…

By: Paul

Paul — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 18:33:56 +0000

How is Zagat more of a content business than Maps, YouTube or Books? They don’t own the restaurants. Users supply the data…

By: Meg

Meg — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 17:52:28 +0000

The problem is “let Yelp fairly value the data.” Since there is no market price for such data, Yelp’s ‘fair value’ would probably be an outrageous number from Google’s point of view. Yelp can’t have it both ways: if they believe Google was stealing traffic from them when their reviews were indexed, then they should be relieved now that Google is no longer doing it. They can’t turn around and complain that Google is stealing traffic from them by NOT indexing them.

Going to the comparison with telcoms: Google is offering its competitors (where ‘competitors’ here means content sites) free and equal access to its ‘pipes.’ If the competitors decline, that’s their problem.

By: rick

rick — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 17:33:55 +0000

“In some ways, Google can’t win: when it tried to aggregate Yelp reviews as a way of adding local content to its Google Place pages, the service complained that it was stealing traffic. Now adding its own reviews from Zagat is likely to draw critics who say it is competing with Yelp and others unfairly by giving prominence to reviews from its own service. ”

Sigh. Newsflash… taking peoples’ content without permission is usually frowned upon. Had Google done a deal with Yelp to display the reviews on Places that would have let Yelp fairly value the data. Simply taking it wasn’t OK (and I’m not particularly a Yelp fan).