Yelp would like to see the antitrust settlement between Google and the European Union have a complete overhaul. Yelp has had many things to say about Google over the years and even rebuffed a buyout attempt a few years ago. Greg Sterling wrote a piece on Search Engine Land about Yelp joining others in wanting to see a harsher settlement for Google with the E.U.
From the article:
Yelp has been an increasingly vocal critic of Google for several years. Now it has joined a group of companies opposing the European Commission’s current antitrust settlement proposal with Google.
Originally Google and Yelp were partners. Google unsuccessfully tried to buy Yelp for a rumored $500 million a year or so before the company went public. Later Yelp complained that Google was including Yelp reviews in its own local product without permission.
According to Yelp, Google said it couldn’t remove those reviews without removing Yelp from the index entirely. The dispute was ultimately resolved with FTC intervention. Indeed, the ability to disallow Google to include content in potentially competitive “vertical” offerings while maintaining it in the general index became part of the FTC antitrust settlement with Google and is part of the current EU settlement proposal.
According to a report in the NY Times, Yelp filed a formal complaint in Europe last month:
Read the full article here
There was another Yelp/Google related story on Tech Crunch which dealt with leaked documents and how Yelp feels it is getting screwed by Google. Danny Sullivan took a look at the documents and feels that Yelp is not getting screwed how they think.
Yelp may once again feel Google is robbing it of its fair share of search traffic, with a study that’s been leaked to TechCrunch to prove it. A close read of that study actually shows that it proves the opposite — or at least, that it’s certainly not as damning as it sounds.
Leaked Documents Show How Yelp Thinks It’s Getting Screwed By Google is the story over at TechCrunch out today with the study. I’ve taken my own headline from that to do this contrarian view.
What Do People Seeking Yelp Content At Google Click On….
Yelp seems to have wanted to determine how much traffic Google might be “siphoning” away from Yelp by somehow promoting Google+ Local in Google’s own listings. Yelp either conducted its own user behavior study or more likely contracted to have one done.
The study is summarized in these slides that TechCrunch obtained and shared on Scribd. Core to it is the contention that if people are explicitly looking for Yelp content on Google, Google is snagging them away.
Read the full article here