Andre Garrigo

The sleeping giant is in trouble.

Earlier today, Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman testified before the US Senate against Google’s monopolistic practices. Stoppelman is arguing that Google strongarmed Yelp into making an unfair deal. 

Here’s some background. In 2005, Google sought a license from Yelp to use portions of Yelp’s rating and review content in Google Local. This relationship ended in 2007 after Google Local began soliciting its own ratings and reviews from users. In 2010, Google began incorporating content scraped from Yelp’s website into Google Local without permission. Although Google had previously acknowledged that it needed a license to use Yelp’s content, it now did so without permission.

Around that same time, Google’s search results page received a noticeable design change. Results from Google Local now began appearing at the top of the page.

Yelp was quick to protest.  Not only was Google scraping their content without a license, but the design of Google’s search results page also unfairly favored Google Local over Yelp and other competitors. 

In response to Yelp’s objections, Google said that it would stop scraping Yelp’s content only if the company agreed to be removed entirely from Google’s search index. 

Yikes! That doesn’t sound very fair. In both cases, Yelp is getting the short end of the stick. Either they help out Google or they get banned from Google. 

With around 65% market share, Google needs to be careful. One false step could lead to a legal ruling that declares them a monopoly. If it happened to Microsoft in the 90s, it could happen to Google in today’s market climate. Eric Schmidt realizes this.

As Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman wrote in a blog post earlier today,

“This has nothing to do with helping consumers get to the best information; it has everything to do with generating more revenue.”