[HN Gopher] Google "hijacked millions of customers and orders" f...
___________________________________________________________________
Google "hijacked millions of customers and orders" from restaurants
- lawsuit
Author : JaimeThompson
Score : 395 points
Date : 2022-03-14 13:14 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| tomohawk wrote:
| How is it not fraud to put in a search term, and have the result
| NOT be what you searched for, but a paid for middleman site that
| is making money off the situation.
|
| This makes google a shill at best.
|
| The middleman is either charging the searcher more to eat at the
| restaurant, or the restaurant is getting less compensation.
|
| Seems pretty evil to me.
| flenserboy wrote:
| Break 'em up. Search, at the very least, needs to be spun off.
| The problem is that they are too useful as a conglomerate (with
| their tentacles in everything) for the government to break them
| up.
| heisenbit wrote:
| Does Google want to win this? I mean if this is legal what is
| stopping me to put a front-end before Google and adding my own
| value add aka. stripping ads?
| josefx wrote:
| > I mean if this is legal what is stopping me to put a front-
| end before Google and adding my own value add aka. stripping
| ads?
|
| Google Chrome? I mean they are literally releasing a new
| version of their browsers plugin API just to break all the ad
| blockers and privacy plugins. They will probably also find a
| way to mark your page as malicious (links to all those malware
| sites,..) or do one of hundreds of other things that will make
| people avoid your website. They basically own the client,
| legality only enters the picture when they have to pay a
| significant amount of fines.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I've sometimes wanted to order food ahead of time at local
| restaurants and pick it up but when I see a poorly branded
| ordering form on a web site with a generic domain name I've got
| little faith my order is going to be processed at all, never mind
| correctly.
|
| (... even if it is on the up-and-up there is still the concern
| that the restaurant doesn't have good processes in place to
| handle online orders. Years ago I tried online ordering from a
| local sub shop which handled in-store orders so well one could
| imagine it being the subject of a business school case study and
| they screwed up my online order because it didn't fit in their
| process.)
|
| It may really be the restaurant that contracts with some web site
| to put up an ordering form, maybe the whole thing is a scam.
| Either way I just don't do it unless I really know online
| ordering is effective.
| lizardactivist wrote:
| Sometimes it seems like Google think the internet is "theirs".
| deutschew wrote:
| either they truly have lost touch with their userbase or the
| large majority of users simply do not care. in any case i'd
| love to use DDG but the results simply isn't good and I always
| end up coming back to google. just wish we could give them less
| information.
|
| but seems they are anti-competitive, youtube vanced is another
| recent example.
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| Try Kagi. Free in beta, paid-for in due course, but excellent
| results.
| P_I_Staker wrote:
| I hate to say it, but I can't stick with DDG. It's bad enough
| for my uses, that I have to constantly switch back to google.
|
| I know mileage may vary for others.
| immibis wrote:
| The Internet _is_ theirs. When will we take it back?
| bootlooped wrote:
| At least the other way around is true sometimes, that the
| internet thinks Google's search results are theirs.
| kaslai wrote:
| While this isn't directly Google's doing, they do enable it for
| other services too: when I was on a road trip, I realized that I
| was going to need one additional hotel stay before getting home,
| so at 1 AM I was shopping around for a hotel on my phone and
| found a place that looked decent enough. I looked up their web
| page to get their phone number (since I don't trust the Google
| side-bar) to call them and everything seemed normal enough.
|
| I clarified what their pet policy was over the phone and they
| said I was fine to bring the pets I needed to bring. They said
| that bringing a large dog and a cat was fine, so I thought
| everything was good. When I got there, the person handling check-
| in complained that I was violating hotel policy, as they only
| allowed one pet and only small dogs were allowed. I was confused
| as I had specifically asked when booking if they would be allowed
| and I was assured that it was fine. Thankfully we were allowed to
| keep the reservation given that we were keeping the animals
| crated while in the room.
|
| When I got home, I compared the phone number in my dial history
| to the one on the hotel's website, and I noticed that they were
| different. After a lot of confusion, I tried replicating my steps
| to navigate to the hotel's website on my phone and realized that
| I had actually clicked on an "Ad" link on Google to get to the
| website, rather than the organic result. The webpages were almost
| identical, with the only difference being the phone number.
| Presumably the "Ad" link was put up by a booking site to funnel
| phone traffic away from the legitimate site.
|
| Presumably because I was tired, I either didn't notice it was an
| ad, or I figured that it would be equivalent to the organic
| search result, but it could have potentially caused me to have to
| find a hotel that accepts big dogs with vacancy at 11 PM in a
| city I don't know, in addition to wasting my money since the
| reservations weren't refundable at that point.
|
| tl;dr: Booking sites use Google ads to steal organic traffic
| intended to go directly to hotels and caused me to
| unintentionally violate a hotel's pet policy
| registeredcorn wrote:
| After reading the entire article, the picture has become a bit
| clearer.
|
| Just to recap the ups and downs of the wishy-washy language these
| corporate bottomfeeders are using:
|
| >We do not receive any compensation for orders or integrations
| with this feature.
|
| So g _ogle states that they made this without any intention of
| compensation.
|
| >While The Ordering App was initially set up to take a percentage
| of sales,
|
| Okay, no. So they _have* received compensation for this, but
| intend to never receive profit in the future?
|
| >g _ogle waived it "to help support restaurants affected during
| the COVID-19 pandemic."
|
| Again, no. So they _were* charging, and _were_ collecting exactly
| the fees they said they weren 't, but _now_ they 've stopped...
| "'cuz covid or whatever. See how loving and giving your global
| overlord is treating its filthy, disgusting peasants? :^)"
|
| Basically, g _ogle waived the fee because they can afford to -
| for now - and want customers to get accustomed to using it_
| before* they start charging for it (again) after it's reached
| some predefined metric. How gracious of them to deceive us with
| such carefully crafted lies.
|
| >Companies that have completed the "Order Online" setup with g
| _ogle can also direct customers to their own online ordering
| services.
|
| Okay, so this _only* impacts companies that want to participate
| in this stupid online ordering setup?
|
| >If restaurants haven't completed the setup, g _ogle appears to
| create a page anyway...
|
| Okay, so no. This isn't just people who want to participate.
| Whether or not a restaurant has _any* interest whatsoever in a
| listing on g _ogle, their (potential) customers will be given the
| impression that the restaurant has an online ordering feature.
|
| >...It's unclear how that happens, though it's possible that a
| restaurant's appearance in a delivery app is what triggers it.
|
| So, presumably, NO ONE at g_ogle knows how or why this happens,
| or at least, no one is unwilling to say how or why this happens
| because they're whorish enough to keep their scummy mouths shut.
| So, whether or not a restaurant has _ANY_ intention of working
| with 3rd parties, those 3rd parties will still try to profit off
| of restaurants hard work, and potentially drive away business by
| the higher charges associated with online ordering...
|
| >If the restaurant has a relationship with the food delivery
| company, it gets charged a fee. These fees can be so high--15 to
| 30 percent in many cases--that the restaurant has no hope of
| making a profit from the order.
|
| ...and if the restaurant actively participates in asinine online
| ordering, the only thing they can possibly gain out of it is...
|
| > "Rather, a restaurant's usual goal is to capture new customers
| that may later place orders with the restaurant outside of the
| Delivery Providers' expensive platforms."
|
| ...blind hope that, after a customer gets accustomed to
| purchasing through a very specific means, that suddenly without
| warning, the customer will then completely change methods into
| paying a completely different way (in-person, over the phone,
| etc.)
|
| And ultimately, whether or not they play ball with that 3rd party
| parasite, they're still being _listed_ on that stupid 3rd party
| website, which in turn is pimping them out to daddy g*ogle for a
| taste of exposure, which benefits all parties. Except for the
| restaurant or customer.
|
| Yeah, I can see why this resulted in a lawsuit.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Sounds like usual Google 'organizing the world's information'
| getting it in trouble again. I mean they're just organizing the
| links that were scattered across sites and services and SERPs to
| doordash, ubereats, etc. Seems like the restaurant has a problem
| with those delivery services more.
| stevespang wrote:
| kevinschumacher wrote:
| I could be wrong here, but, I think the lawsuit is totally
| misdirected. Restaurants should be upset with the ordering
| platforms (e.g., DoorDash) instead.
|
| The problem is the ordering platforms enabling this integration
| without restaurant consent. (Or, perhaps worse, offering orders
| without restaurant consent?)
|
| Google just provides an API that allows restaurant ordering from
| Maps, Search etc. It connects to the ordering platforms (e.g.,
| DoorDash) [1]. The ordering platforms integrate with this API by
| uploading data feeds and implementing a server with specific
| interface. [2]
|
| I don't think Google even takes a cut!
|
| I worked on an integration to a similar API, "Reserve with
| Google" [3]. With that one, at least, it can be enabled/disabled
| at the restaurant level. I assume that "Order with Google" is
| similar.
|
| [1] https://developers.google.com/actions/food-ordering
|
| [2] https://developers.google.com/actions/food-
| ordering/guides/b...
|
| [3] https://www.google.com/maps/reserve/
| wnevets wrote:
| I just wish there was a way to disable that integration. I have
| to go out of my way to avoid using it and go directly to the
| restaurant site to place the order.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| The problem is that Google makes it look like it's part of the
| restaurant's own Google Business account but then directs to a
| 3rd party without the restaurant's explicit consent.
| Melatonic wrote:
| This is a very good point and I think perhaps, from a logic
| point of view, a huge issue.
| account42 wrote:
| Depends, if paid ads were involved to list e.g. DoorDash higher
| on the results then I think google should deserve some of the
| blame.
| kevinschumacher wrote:
| I don't think you can blame Google for allowing a delivery
| operator to buy ads on a restaurant's name.
|
| If it's the delivery operator's business model to buy ads to
| get a cut of an order, then, we should be upset with the
| delivery operator.
|
| (edit: removed off topic and specific business)
| wgjordan wrote:
| I think it's perfectly reasonable to blame/be upset with
| _both_ the delivery operator (for infringing upon the
| restaurant 's trademark by causing confusion as to the
| source of goods/services), _and_ the e-commerce platform
| for knowingly facilitating /allowing the trademark
| infringement to occur on its platform. This is called
| 'secondary' or 'contributory' infringement in legal jargon.
| gumby wrote:
| > Google just provides an API that allows restaurant ordering
| from Maps, Search etc. It connects to the ordering platforms
| (e.g., DoorDash) [1]. The ordering platforms integrate with
| this API by uploading data feeds and implementing a server with
| specific interface. [2]
|
| > I don't think Google even takes a cut!
|
| Yes officer, I did leave the bank door unlocked as a favor to
| my friend, but I didn't even get any of the stolen money!
| kevinschumacher wrote:
| This is a fair take. But in your analogy, we'd go after the
| thief, too, right? And the thief would get a harsher
| sentence?
|
| Yet there's no lawsuit against the thief.
| gumby wrote:
| Door dash is odious and needs a comeuppance, no question.
| But their theft does not acquit their accomplices.
| josefx wrote:
| > The problem is the ordering platforms enabling this
| integration without restaurant consent.
|
| The lawsuit seems to focus on the history of how that happened
| a bit. Namely Google seems to have initially tried to sell this
| API to restaurants directly. Hence the brazen trademark
| infringement and restaurant impersonation, it was intended to
| operate with the authorization of the restaurants directly.
| Only when that failed did they move on to third party
| distributors that didn't have any right to the trademarks,
| without changing the now deceptive interface.
|
| > I don't think Google even takes a cut!
|
| The lawsuit is a bit unclear on that (through information and
| belief) but also cites alternative revenue streams through ads
| and pushing more people onto its own payment platform.
| manholio wrote:
| It is completely irrelevant if Google takes a cut or not.
| Google uses the restaurant's brand name to enable one of
| their delivery partners to undercut the restaurant's own
| delivery system.
|
| The nature of the partnership between Google and the delivery
| firm is not directly relevant to the restaurant's loss of
| revenue. They could be building a future business, they could
| be compensated in an indirect fashion (ex. those who pay more
| to AdSense get a preferential treatment) etc.
| kevinschumacher wrote:
| > Namely Google seems to have initially tried to sell this
| API to restaurants directly.
|
| ...which was a fools errand. It is impossible to expect
| individual restaurants (_maybe_ aside from large restaurant
| groups - ie, big chains) to integrate with this API.
|
| To me it seems much more likely that Google pivoted to
| working directly with delivery operators for practical
| reasons to make the product functional.
|
| I would also bet that contracts with the delivery operators
| include a bit about how they will enable this integration and
| what that means. Perhaps they do not make it explicit enough
| in the sales cycle (or, didn't in the case of Lime)
| tomger wrote:
| Google doesn't take a cut _yet_.
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| Bingo. Cripple the competition now, then turn on the money
| spigot whenever they want.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Or wait until you gain critical mass, and then pull the
| plug on the entire project since it's not making money.
| It is the Googs after all.
| awill wrote:
| Good take. This made me thing of all the GOogle failures
| in a different light. It isn't just that they abandon
| users. They also crush competitors in the initial phase
| (by being free, or generally having Google branding),
| only to pull the plug. We often talk about the users left
| with having to find an alternative, but not the
| competitors they crushed along the way.
| asah wrote:
| In ads and commerce, Google has much longer time
| horizon... e.g. froogle was launched in 2002 and they
| rebranded and "turned on the spigot" in 2012.
| rlewkov wrote:
| Google wouldn't do that because ... well ... because
| don't be evil
| Melatonic wrote:
| Or discontinue the feature completely when the director
| in charge of the project gets bored with it
| emodendroket wrote:
| Not sure how that happens unless they decide to launch
| their own DoorDash clone.
| vgeek wrote:
| Froogle 2.0? Let them signup and invest integration efforts
| to get an intial free spigot of traffic, then yank the rug
| and start charging on a per unit basis once it reaches
| critical mass.
| ptudan wrote:
| I would be shocked if google didn't get a cut, or at least a
| pay per click. Just doesn't seem like them not to
| kevinschumacher wrote:
| It could be more of a strategic play to keep eyeballs on
| Google properties and further build the advertising profile.
| Also provides a foothold into entering the
| ordering/delivery/reservation businesses at a much later date
| if they so choose.
|
| IIRC Google didn't take a cut on restaurant reservations, at
| least
| jsnell wrote:
| The article addresses this, with the following quote:
|
| > We do not receive any compensation for orders or
| integrations with this feature
|
| It could of course be a lie, but that seems like a bad
| strategy.
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| Imagine every part of Google is a neural network black box
| that has machine-learned to say and do whatever makes the
| company the most profit as a whole, lawsuits deducted.
| lmkg wrote:
| It can't deduct the value of lawsuits until it gets
| training data.
| trulyme wrote:
| The data is incoming, no worries.
| mdoms wrote:
| Regardless of the underlying technical implementation, Google
| is offering an unsolicited Order Now feature to its users under
| the restaurants' brand.
| [deleted]
| brightball wrote:
| I honestly don't know how restaurants even get a say in the
| matter. Ultimately, as a customer I am placing a to-go order
| and hiring somebody to go pick it up for me.
|
| DoorDash has made an effort to streamline the process. If to-go
| orders are an option then you really don't get a choice in who
| I send to pick it up.
| wccrawford wrote:
| They get a say because those companies were doing everything
| they can not to let the customer know about that disconnect.
| Many customers thought the restaurant had agreed to the
| service, and were holding the restaurant responsible for
| mistakes the delivery companies made.
|
| I'm not quite willing to call it fraud yet, but it's in that
| area.
| brightball wrote:
| I can understand that aspect of it.
| RegW wrote:
| > I'm not quite willing to call it fraud yet,
|
| Great. So if you're happy with just a bit of disconnect,
| I'll get down the dump and pick up some old oil drums and
| fire up a kitchen in the garage. What do you fancy? KFC?
| Nandos?
|
| No. If we can pretend to represent someone else without
| their concent, based on unverified 3rd party data, then
| we're cooking with tinned worms.
| mulmen wrote:
| Some restaurants don't offer delivery for quality reasons.
| When Doordash impersonates those businesses the reputation of
| the restaurant is at risk.
|
| It's a classic case of internalizing the gains and
| externalizing the costs.
| lupire wrote:
| takeout /= delivery
| tsimionescu wrote:
| They get a say through trademark law. If you show the KFC
| logo or even name on a service, you have to seek KFC's
| permission to do so.
| technothrasher wrote:
| As long as you're reselling actual KFC products, you are
| not likely violating their trademark. However, if you
| deceive the customer into thinking they are buying directly
| from KFC, then you likely are.
|
| In a similar situation, Ferrari has often attempted to keep
| independent repair shops from using the Ferrari name and
| logo to advertise that they service Ferrari cars. They've
| lost quite a few times.
|
| All that said, you can still run into copyright issues when
| reproducing somebody's logo.
| 6510 wrote:
| Not sure, who would pay the bill for the food poisoning?
|
| If you are reselling my food am I still responsible for
| it?
|
| Say you heat the container on your bike to a danger zone
| temperature. Say the order sits at the bottom but you
| have the same order on top. The food at the bottom could
| sit there all day.
|
| Say I've also undercooked the chicken.
|
| Who is to blame?
| winternett wrote:
| Google takes a cut when those companies pay for ads on the
| platform. It's the old switcheroo...
|
| For many years Google had run their search engine as a trusted
| source for indexed search with advertising subtly placed. Now
| that they are dominating the entire search market, they are
| skewing results to anyone who pays for promotion with them
| under the table, and it's not clearly apparent to users.
|
| I can't tell you how many times I've tried to find a restaurant
| web site on google and it's buried under direct links to door
| dash and other order online services that add surcharges. It's
| so bad now that the only way I can ensure that I'm not being
| overcharged for no good reason is to order by phone or directly
| at restaurants. There is very little value added to so many
| online businesses now because of twisted Internet schemes like
| this.
| kevinschumacher wrote:
| > Google takes a cut when those companies pay for ads on the
| platform.
|
| > I can't tell you how many times I've tried to find a
| restaurant web site on google and it's buried under direct
| links to door dash and other order online services that add
| surcharges.
|
| That's definitely true, but that's not what's being
| discussed.
| demadog wrote:
| > Now that they are dominating the entire search market, they
| are skewing results to anyone who pays for promotion with
| them under the table, and it's not clearly apparent to users.
|
| Do you mean for restaurant results specifically or all Google
| Search results? Big difference if both.
| riverdroid wrote:
| Be aware of platforms publishing a 'proxy' phone number so
| they can still collect their fees:
| https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/6/20756878/yelp-grubhub-
| comm...
| lupire wrote:
| Why? Do you also beware of restaraunt waiters collecting a
| fee for bringing you food you could get directly from the
| cook?
|
| If you want to undercut an affilate referral, go to the
| restaurant ditrctlry instead of a third party leadgen site.
| notjulianjaynes wrote:
| > Now that they are dominating the entire search market, they
| are skewing results to anyone who pays for promotion with
| them under the table, and it's not clearly apparent to users.
|
| Slightly off topic, but as an example of this, I did a search
| for the manufacturer part number of a brushed DC motor the
| other day. It was just a randomish string of characters like
| S-5672 or something, and under image results and all the
| results were completely unrelated pictures of an entirely
| different _brushless_ motor that I had recently purchased.
| The seeming effect of this is that Google knew I was looking
| for a specific product, and chose to show me a competing
| product instead, despite them not being comparable.
| Melatonic wrote:
| I have found their search to be less and less useful for
| things like this when it used to be great. Even searching
| in quotes has gotten much less "exact". If you really want
| to do an exact search you have to quote it AND now also
| check a box for "exact results" in the little search
| options dropdown.
| CivBase wrote:
| > When users click the "Order Online" button, they're directed to
| a page that in many cases contains large links to food delivery
| companies, complete with their logos. The restaurant's own site
| gets a link as well, though it's a small, generic "website"
| button. In some cases, Google provides an interface for
| assembling an order, complete with prices and descriptions of the
| menu items.
|
| > "Google's 'Order Online' button leads to an unauthorized online
| storefront--one owned and controlled by Google--wherein consumers
| can place orders for the restaurant's products, all under the
| restaurant's tradename," the lawsuit says. "Google prominently
| features the restaurant's tradename at the top of the page, above
| the restaurant's address and menu, to give the user the distinct
| impression that the storefront and products are authorized and
| sponsored by the restaurant, when they are not."
|
| I'm not sure if "business fraud" is a thing, but it seems to me
| like it should be illegal for any business to offer any services
| on behalf of another business without permission. It's fine if
| Google displays what it thinks a restaurant's menu is, so long as
| they aren't pretending to be the restaurant. But taking orders
| and payment on behalf of another business without their
| permission is wrong - and using the other business's branding
| like that is especially twisted.
| jsmith45 wrote:
| I'm really confused by this complaint.
|
| If I hit a restaurant's order button I get taken to
| food.google.com where I am asked to pick a platform to order
| on, which includes doordash, grubhub, or the restaurants own
| website (if available). Perhaps if only one of the platforms
| were available, it would direct me to that provider? (the
| examples I've tried have all had multiple options).
|
| I'm certainly am not seeing this Google controlled storefront
| thing from the complaint, unless they are claiming the Provider
| selection screen is a storefront.
| bootlooped wrote:
| I haven't seen a case yet where the branding is that deceptive.
| I would like to see it, I'm open to believing it exists.
|
| So far, in the examples I've looked at, it has been fairly
| clear who the players are. I liken it to seeing the logos for
| car manufacturers on a car rental company's website. I know I'm
| not entering directly into a transaction with Toyota. I
| understand that if I search "rent Toyota" on Google a lot of
| third party services are going to come up in the results.
| impalallama wrote:
| this is disappointing to learn about, i have ordered through
| these options before, usually for in store pickup so its
| unfortunate that i'm still using these predatory services that
| i've been working to avoid
| endisneigh wrote:
| > On those pages, customers are prompted with large buttons to
| order with food delivery companies like GrubHub, DoorDash, or
| Seamless.
| johndfsgdgdfg wrote:
| Google isn't even in restaurants business and they are already
| defrauding the restaurants. No wonder people hate Google and love
| Amazon. Amazon has been doing business with small business and
| has never taken advantage of them. Meanwhile Google is siphoning
| money from small restaurants during the pandemic.
| jaywalk wrote:
| > Amazon has been doing business with small business and has
| never taken advantage of them.
|
| Oh, wow. I think the countless small businesses that have been
| essentially forced out by AmazonBasics would disagree with you.
| natpalmer1776 wrote:
| While it is still under contention, see recent news surrounding
| the Amazon Basics brands.
| blakesterz wrote:
| I've seen this when searching for restaurants, and I spotted it
| right away. It's a classic dark pattern and I'm surprised that
| more restaurants aren't suing them over this.
|
| Google search results have become dangerous (for lack of a better
| word) and really hard to use when searching for some things
| lately. I shouldn't have to carefully scrutinize every link ON
| Google and then double check I'm actually ending up where Google
| said it was sending me. I understand they want to squeeze every
| possible dollar out of every search, but I no longer trust them
| for certain searches.
|
| I'm not even talking about the results, this is just what's on
| the actual Google search results page. There's just way too many
| ads and other tricks like this happening.
| dvtrn wrote:
| "I shouldn't have to carefully scrutinize every link ON Google
| and then double check I'm actually ending up where Google said
| it was sending me."
|
| I've noticed it only a handful of times, but phone numbers for
| listings, can't be trusted either anymore [1]
|
| GrubHub also does it: there has been more than one occasion
| where I've searched a restaurant in a new town while traveling
| for work, called the phone number to inquire about a menu item
| thinking I was dialing the restaurant but I had instead dialed
| a GrubHub or Goggle contact center.
|
| At first I didn't realize what was going on, but quickly put it
| together after ordering from a restaurant that appeared in
| Google, using the "order form" and getting a phone call from a
| different voice telling me the item I ordered hadn't been sold
| by the restaurant in weeks due to sourcing issues.
|
| "I just spoke with Mark, he said you do sell it"
|
| "We don't have anyone named Mark working here"
|
| I go check the listing again, check the phone number, and ask
| the person on the other end of the line what the restaurant
| business telephone number is: sure enough it's a completely
| different number.
|
| Not sure how widespread this is or how to tell which restaurant
| phone numbers on these platforms take me to someone actually
| _at the establishment_ , but....well...shit like this.
|
| [1] https://www.engadget.com/2019-08-06-grubhub-is-replacing-
| res.... (article is from 2019 but this has happened to me as
| recently as oct/2021)
| car_analogy wrote:
| From that endgadget article: _Users wouldn 't have ordered
| food "without our platform," company spokesperson Brendan
| Lewis said._
|
| Ah yes, if it wasn't for GrubHub, we would all starve!
|
| I've never seen the middle-man parasite's lie exposed this
| clearly. People have been ordering direct from restaurants
| for ages, but now that Yelp/Grubhub managed to muscle their
| way between restaurants and customers, they take credit for
| this entire business existing, to justify their sleazy
| practices.
| immibis wrote:
| It's a common talking point that if not for landlords
| (landleeches), nobody would have houses.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| Do they actually pretend to be the restaurant on the phone,
| like they answer with "Tony's Pizza" if that's the
| restaurant?
| dvtrn wrote:
| They did, yes.
|
| I'm not qualified to know whether or not this counts as
| some kind of fraud, but it was the final straw for me to
| stop using these delivery services once and for all after
| other unrelated negative experiences with them.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| IANAL, but for the websites, it's easily trademark
| infringement. In-N-Out notably sued DoorDash over them
| using the In-N-Out logo on the site.[0]
|
| It's understandable why. If a customer receives a bad
| order due to GrubHub, DoorDash, etc., it reflects badly
| on the restaurant, even if it's not their fault. See
| claim 29 from the filing[1]:
|
| > Defendant's use of Plaintiff's famous trademarks
| implies that Defendant not only delivers In-N-Out
| products to its customers, but that the quality and
| services offered by Defendant is the same as if consumers
| had made purchases directly from Plaintiff. Upon
| information and belief, the quality of services offered
| by Defendant does not at all comport with the standards
| that consumers expect from Plaintiff's goods and
| services. Further, Plaintiff has no control over the time
| it takes Defendant to deliver Plaintiff's goods to
| consumers, or over the temperature at which the goods are
| kept during delivery, nor over the food handling and
| safety practices of Defendant's delivery drivers. While
| Plaintiff adheres to the Food Code, on information and
| belief, Defendant does not adhere to such regulations,
| including with regard to compliance with required food
| safety and handling practices.
|
| [0]: https://money.cnn.com/2015/11/12/technology/in-n-
| out-doordas...
|
| [1]: https://www.eater.com/2015/11/11/9714840/in-n-out-
| doordash-d...
| syshum wrote:
| this is one area where the FTC should be stepping in, It
| should be seen as blatant fraud for a business to represent
| themselves as another business to the point where users are
| confused who they are actually calling.
|
| It always amazes me that the government is never concerned
| with things is SHOULD BE, instead is very concerned with
| things that should be none of its business.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Grubhub has been notorious for doing this for years. It's not
| surprising that Google is trying to take their cut.
| resygonewrong wrote:
| I just tried making reservations for an anniversary dinner, so
| I Google "Obstinate Daughter" and they put up a little widget
| for Resy and lo and behold there are no good reservations times
| available despite it being zero-dark-thirty on the first day
| one could even make reservations for my targeted date.
|
| Now I'm a bit skeptical that the city collectively got up at
| the ass-crack of dawn to make a dinner reservation on a random
| weeknight, so I go visit the restaurant website and they have a
| wide open calendar. Had I not scrutinized the Google offerings
| the restaurant would have lost out on my business.
|
| IANAL but that whole offering on the part of Google just seems
| morally wrong if not some form of fraudulent.
| krnlpnc wrote:
| So I wonder what's the end game of a pattern like this? Is it
| a shakedown type of situation where if a restaurant doesn't
| pay up to enable some reservations "integration" they will be
| shown as fully booked by default?
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Google does all kinds of stupid things like this. They
| constantly change how they interpret data and punish anyone
| who doesn't (or can't) follow the new rules.
|
| They'll suddenly require X to be valid against a specific
| standard, but the maker of the product you sell doesn't
| follow X. Oh, and omitting X is the same as having an
| invalid X.
|
| Frankly, it's ridiculous. We have to have an entire paid
| position just for dealing with Google's bullshit.
| zerocrates wrote:
| As far as I see that restaurant just does in fact use Resy
| and it looks to me like Google just shows the same results
| the Resy site does. What they _do_ do is just not show you
| times that are outside a window around the selected time (and
| they preselect one) so maybe that 's the issue?
|
| I'm not really seeing the fraud or moral issue here. Of
| course the reservation system isn't the same as the ordering
| one and just the nature of the market makes the reservation
| services less problematic than the food-ordering ones.
| zivkovicp wrote:
| The irony is that these techniques are against their own TOS
| for Adsense/Adwords, but I guess it's more of a "do as I say,
| not as I do" sort of situation.
| blakesterz wrote:
| That reminds me of an old tweet from someone to Matt Cutts
| (at least I think it was Cutts). MC had tweeted a reply to
| someone about how they don't allow scrapers and sites that
| just reuse content from other sites. Someone else replied to
| him with a screenshot of Google's search results page that
| had scraped and reused something from somewhere and said "I
| think I found one of those sites for you". (Hoping I remember
| that at least somewhat close to how it happened! It's a
| somewhat faded memory from several years ago)
| random314 wrote:
| The top search result was Google scraping from wikipedia.
| wolpoli wrote:
| > don't allow scrapers and sites that just reuse content
| from other sites.
|
| I remember there used to be ranking penalties against
| scraper sites. I have not been following Google's SEO rules
| in a while, so does anyone know what happened to it?
| Implicated wrote:
| It's essentially the 'duplicate content'
| penalty/penalties. [1]
|
| It's pretty ironic really... take a look at this
| scenario...
|
| Let's say we have Website A which we'll consider a
| "legitimate" website producing unique and quality content
| and we have Website B which is not, but it has some
| clever people running it's scrapers/submissions..
|
| Developer responsible for Website B has identified that
| Website A produces quality content that it wants to steal
| - setups up a scraper to check for updates on Website A,
| when it finds them it will immediately scrape the content
| and repost it on Website B. Then they will update their
| sitemap and submit it to Google (or some other of the
| various ways to 'alert' google of a new page/updated
| content) which will trigger a crawl of that page/website.
|
| If this crawl/index of Website B happens before Website A
| - who does Google see as the producer of that content and
| who is now the "duplicate"?
|
| Whack-a-mole.
|
| 1: https://backlinko.com/hub/seo/duplicate-content
| weird-eye-issue wrote:
| Funny, I guess. But pages that scrape short excerpts from
| other sites and link back to them in order to provide
| additional value to a user absolutely are allowed by
| Google. Sites that scrape large portions of text and don't
| credit it back aren't allowed and would be illegal.
|
| An example of an allowed page doing this would be a "recipe
| roundup" where a site lists 10 or so recipes in a
| particular theme (like Best Keto Breakfast Recipes) and
| each one links back to the original recipe with a short
| description.
|
| I'm not surprised this sort of "gotcha" was popular on
| Twitter though (and is why I don't use Twitter)
| klyrs wrote:
| Only, google rarely credits the sources they scraped for
| infoboxes.
| weird-eye-issue wrote:
| For things that are considered facts they don't. But for
| Featured Snippets they do. If something is a widely
| recognized fact you don't need to credit a source in your
| own writing too
| klyrs wrote:
| Is some random celebrity's net worth a "widely recognized
| fact"?
|
| https://theoutline.com/post/1399/how-google-ate-
| celebritynet...
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| Google gets "facts" wrong pretty often because it gathers
| them by scraping. There are too many possible facts for
| them to have all been verified by a human.
| dazc wrote:
| That did happen, as you describe it.
| Unklejoe wrote:
| > I'm surprised that more restaurants aren't suing them over
| this.
|
| My guess is that most restaurants don't even know where to
| begin when it comes to suing something like Google. At least
| that's how I would feel.
| acomjean wrote:
| I always try to go the website. But I think adding some murk is
| that some restaurants use third party order systems
|
| like by door dash via the generic: https://order.online/en-US/
|
| For example this is a doordash site (set up by the restaurant):
| https://order.online/business/-54797/en-US
|
| A restaurant tried to call me about an order, but coming from a
| toll free number I ignored it. I asked them why they didn't
| have a local number. They could only call me back via the door
| dash number as my number wasn't provided to the restaurant. It
| was weird.
|
| Around here the local restaurant POS vendor exposed their
| interface online and made and app for pickups. I'll use that
| directly if I'm ordering from a place that uses it. Thats a
| little fraught too, because the staff has to learn to use that
| too (staff has to have some training on turing online ordering
| on or off..which they sometimes have forgotten to do)
|
| https://pos.toasttab.com
| colinmhayes wrote:
| > my number wasn't provided to the restaurant.
|
| When I was interning for a consultancy one of my assignments
| was to create a system that could be placed in restaurants to
| mitm printer jobs so that our low fee delivery service could
| scrape phone numbers and emails from third party delivery
| receipts and send coupons to get customers to switch to our
| service. Doordash probably figured out this sort of stuff was
| happening so took all the identifying info out of their
| service?
| acomjean wrote:
| That makes sense.
| noasaservice wrote:
| Remember, that DoorDash is YC13.
|
| Ycombinator is enabling this kind of behavior, either
| historically or currently.
|
| I think that YC should audit what their prospective, current,
| and older companies are doing, and avoid or forbid unethical
| and/or illegal behavior. And barring active influence, they
| should outwardly denounce companies that choose to engage in
| these kinds of scams.
|
| (I have a private plugin that does company searches and sees
| if they are a YC company. You'd be really surprised just how
| many negative articles are YC founded companies.)
|
| Edit: and the downvotes commence
| mikestew wrote:
| _I think that YC should audit what their prospective,
| current, and older companies are doing, and avoid or forbid
| unethical and /or illegal behavior._
|
| Why do you call out YC specifically? Maybe I missed the
| memo, but I don't look at companies coming out of YC as
| being made from some special moral fiber. Quite the
| contrary in a lot of cases, and DoorDash is just one
| example. If there's anything YC is "auditing", my guess is
| that it's a P/L sheet, not questionable business decisions.
| noasaservice wrote:
| > Why do you call out YC specifically?
|
| They run a massive social media site (HN is _that_
| massive). It 's why you and I are here. It's why on
| Twitter this place is known as "That Orange Place", and
| YC, and HN.
|
| And, because of their clout, they SHOULD be leading the
| way on ethical venture capital.
|
| And by shoving the Overton Window more towards ethical VC
| funding, and denouncing shitty companies when they start
| to engage in unethical or borderline-illegal behavior,
| they can be the trend-setters in aiming the trajectories
| of what SV and other high tech areas are.
| mikestew wrote:
| Fair enough, I agree that it would be nice if YC were
| leading the way, as you say. And why hold YC's feet to
| the fire more than any other? Okay, the massive social
| media site they put their name on. Maybe it's my old-man
| cynicism, but I just don't see that justifying an
| _expectation_ that YC do better, just an explanation of
| why they _should_ do better.
|
| Anyway, not disagreeing, and thank you for the response
| explaining where you're coming from.
| david38 wrote:
| Yea, I don't see YC as any kind of moral filter despite it
| appears to have that kind of halo.
| zerocrates wrote:
| Lots of restaurants around here use Toast and I'll pretty
| much always use that if it's available.
|
| I get a nice consistent interface, it remembers my
| name/payment across the different restaurants that use it,
| and as far as I've seen they're not a raw deal for the
| restaurant. Square I think is pretty similar? Though I just
| don't personally see as many places using it for online
| ordering.
|
| This Google feature unfortunately seems to favor the high-
| commission major apps in its listings, though the "native"
| one where Google itself shows an ordering interface seems to
| be a no-commission DoorDash thing, at least for the
| restaurants I've seen? Which still has "extra-middleman"
| problems but at least isn't so bad financially.
| djitz wrote:
| Yep. I noticed this when they started doing it in maps. I
| always wonder what their commission is, which is in turn part
| of the commission for Grubhub or any other food delivery
| service.
|
| You have to make a real effort to avoid their crap hurdles just
| to make it to the damn restaurant's own website.
| tpmx wrote:
| I guess it's about https://orderfood.google.com/ (US only, VPN
| works) + links in organic search results.
| [deleted]
| indymike wrote:
| I pulled the plug on Google Search about two months ago and
| switched to Brave's new search engine. It works for me. Search is
| a tough product because nearly every way you come up with to
| monetize it counts in either diluting the SERPs with paid
| listings or diverting clicks to something other than what the
| user is looking for. I.e. I search for a movie and get the Google
| movie listing instead of a listing for the website for the actual
| movie.
|
| On Brave Search: I've had to use Google search twice in the past
| month, and it was useful one of those times, so Brave has been
| fantastic so far. In the past,the new search engine usually lasts
| about 3-4 days and I give up and go back to Google. This time...
| well... still using Brave.
| Method-X wrote:
| My experience with Brave Search has been fantastic as well. I
| also like the UI much more than any other search engine I've
| used.
| FearlessNebula wrote:
| Monetization wouldn't be an issue if we paid for these
| services. I'd be willing to pay $5-10 a month for a good search
| engine that respects your privacy. But I guess the average
| person hates the idea of paying for any software these days.
| immibis wrote:
| It's substantial friction. You pay for a search engine,
| another search engine, a documentation site, YouTube, Hacker
| News, 50 different newspapers...
|
| What I want is some fixed revenue-sharing service a la
| YouTube Premium but for the entire Internet. Pay $XX/month,
| and get access to a zillion websites, with each one receiving
| revenue proportional to how much you use it.
|
| Except the websites would probably game that by loading a
| zillion empty iframes or something. Damn.
| bryans wrote:
| I got curious about this and wanted to spitball some numbers.
| According to a Google search, Google's average user "conducts
| 3-4 searches each day." Nobody goes into details, so we don't
| know if those include subsequent searches or the average
| number of pages they looked at -- though I think we can
| assume that would be pretty close to 1, as most people are
| going to find what they're looking for in the first few
| results.
|
| Let's say the average searches per day is 4 and they are
| general enough queries to be showing ads, of which there are
| an average of 3 per page. It would be a mix of CPM and
| clicks, but each placement will average out to roughly $0.007
| in revenue. That's 360 ads per month resulting in ~$2.50 per
| user.
|
| Of course, that doesn't include the specific overhead of
| brokering the ads or developing and maintaining such a
| bizarrely complicated system, and it's safe to assume their
| margins are at most 20-30%. So, after expending all of that
| effort in creating this anti-privacy, anti-consumer, anti-
| competitive system that's rigged against both the advertisers
| and users, they're making a whopping $0.75/mo per search
| user.
|
| Which is all to say that if search were simply search, then
| they could: charge $10/year for an ad-free and privacy-
| focused service, drastically simplify their entire
| infrastructure, reassign the ad support staff toward much-
| needed consumer issues, and actually be making more money in
| the process. However, this doesn't include Maps or other
| services, which is how they convert that $0.75/mo search user
| into a $10/mo ecosystem addict (or $1,000/mo supporter of
| content creators).
|
| Search is the method for directing traffic where they want it
| to go, and the trick is to also be making money from all of
| those places, with even more profitable ads or salable
| products. I think any search engine will struggle with this
| when it inevitably grows beyond its core product, because the
| alternative is a mess of different companies, products, APIs
| and methodologies that barely work together -- moral high
| ground wages aren't exactly an ingredient for explosive,
| cohesive and industry-competitive innovation.
| ascagnel_ wrote:
| A couple of thoughts on this:
|
| - You're completely discounting the overhead of running a
| $10/mo service, not to mention the cost of acquisition.
|
| - Google and other free-to-use search engines aren't going
| away in this scenario, so this hypothetical paid search
| engine will need to "compete with free"
|
| - If you're competing with free, you need to offer a better
| experience than the free service. Cutting the BS sounds
| good, but is it $10/mo better than the free service?
|
| Finally, the biggest issue is that, with the ad model, the
| minimum Google earns per user is $0.75/mo, but they could
| make notably more off of negotiated deals for big purchases
| (eg: Google could sell placements against high-dollar
| things like real estate for more money) or could just get a
| windfall from high-frequency months; with your model, the
| maximum the business can ever earn is $10/mo.
| bryans wrote:
| > You're completely discounting the overhead of running a
| $10/mo service, not to mention the cost of acquisition.
|
| You're entirely misreading what I said. They already have
| the service and that is an existing cost. To have the ads
| is an additional cost (and a massive one at that), which
| could be entirely replaced with a virtually zero-cost
| purchase form. That's less overhead, not equal -- and
| certainly not more. Also, I specifically referenced the
| overhead in my comment, so it's amazing that you would
| claim I'm disregarding it.
|
| > Google and other free-to-use search engines aren't
| going away in this scenario, so this hypothetical paid
| search engine will need to "compete with free"
|
| I literally used Google as an example of how they could
| make more money without ads, and I didn't say anything at
| all about them only having a paid option. Also, my
| conclusion was that paid can't compete with free, so you
| just reiterated my point in an attempt to "prove me
| wrong."
|
| > If you're competing with free, you need to offer a
| better experience than the free service. Cutting the BS
| sounds good, but is it $10/mo better than the free
| service?
|
| I said $10/year, not $10/mo. Is $1/mo worth it from a
| user perspective to remove ads and privacy invasive
| features? The universal answer to that for any employed
| individual is yes (even if they've been tricked into
| thinking otherwise), because all of these companies have
| repeatedly proven that they can't be trusted to monetize
| free services without acting incredibly harmful in the
| process.
|
| > Finally, the biggest issue is that, with the ad model,
| the minimum Google earns per user is $0.75/mo, but they
| could make notably more off of negotiated deals for big
| purchases (eg: Google could sell placements against high-
| dollar things like real estate for more money) or could
| just get a windfall from high-frequency months; with your
| model, the maximum the business can ever earn is $10/mo.
|
| I said that $0.75 was the average, not the minimum, and
| that was already based on an average of all of the higher
| and lower term rates. If users are contributing $0.75/mo
| on average via ads, then a switch to paying $1/mo
| averages out to more revenue. That's how averages work.
|
| And again, my conclusion was that paid doesn't actually
| beat free from the amoral business perspective, so all
| you're doing is agreeing with me while also trying to
| tell me I'm wrong (based on things nobody said).
| AvocadoPanic wrote:
| I'd also want to maintain my own list of domains I'd want
| excluded from my results.
|
| I should be able to share my 'shitlist' with other users and
| see the rank of my shitlist domains that are included on
| other's shitlist.
| izacus wrote:
| Open the neighbouring comment thread about YouTube Vanced and
| you'll see that even an average HNer thinks asking for
| payment is an insult to their very being.
| FearlessNebula wrote:
| Which is bad, because if developers (who know the work that
| goes into building software better than anybody else)
| aren't very willing to pay, it's hopeless to expect your
| average person to be willing to pay for software.
| danuker wrote:
| Like paying for a smart TV does not make advertising on smart
| TVs an issue?
| FearlessNebula wrote:
| Well that's just greed, or driving the base price down by
| subsidizing with ads. So paying won't prevent this, but if
| a product is "free" you can be pretty much certain it'll be
| riddled with ads.
| Folcon wrote:
| As much as I subscribe to this perspective, when I think
| about how much money must be flowing through these
| ecosystems, I wonder if that's the real price point?
|
| I mean theoretically how much would you be willing to pay for
| search that has no advertisement.
|
| $1000 a year?
|
| I'm genuinely curious, what would a privacy first non-
| advertising based approach cost? I mean I suspect you could
| discount it by not tracking individual users but instead just
| advertise on results searched, but what does the extreme
| version of this cost like do you think?
|
| What kind of money do we need to put on the table that
| someone serving it goes, you know what, let's just provide a
| great search product, if we start trying to mess around with
| ads / tracking, we're risking killing this golden goose?
| FearlessNebula wrote:
| Yeah I wonder the same, and we really don't know. I often
| wonder if Facebook would be better if it didn't rely on ads
| and data-mining. Would Facebook be "good"? Would Facebook
| even exist at this scale if people had to pay? People are
| so hesitant to pay even a buck for an app, it makes me
| question if all these massive services could've been
| possible if they weren't "free".
| Folcon wrote:
| I feel like there's a world of difference between paying
| a buck for an app and paying for something like this, you
| could argue that the value delivered is so high the fee
| would be out of the ballpark for most to be able to pay.
|
| But there are definitely people who are genuinely
| interested in paying.
|
| Even facebook does provide me with some benefit, but less
| at present than Alphabet does, though maybe with Oculus
| that will change?
| salawat wrote:
| Why not go to your local library, maintainers of an ad free
| search index, and find out?
|
| This isn't novel work, and is likely even cheaper than the
| dead tree variant. The most expensive parts are the
| hardware and storage costs for the index.
| Folcon wrote:
| This is pretty interesting, would libraries even be
| interested in maintaining a search index?
|
| That's like a return to yahoo directory / search index.
|
| Or were you imagining something different?
| [deleted]
| pdonis wrote:
| _> I wonder if that 's the real price point?_
|
| Alphabet's total revenue in 2021 was about $257B. If, say,
| a billion users paid an average of $257 a year, that would
| be the same annual revenue. That doesn't seem at all
| unreasonable (less than $22 a month for actual services for
| me as a user unadulterated by ads and without privacy
| concerns? where do I sign up?), particularly since if they
| were just providing services users actually need--search,
| maps, gmail, etc.--and not having to add on all the extra
| effort of advertising, it would be _cheaper_ for them to
| provide those services to users than it is now.
| Folcon wrote:
| Ok, that's an interesting take, as an example, I know
| that I'd toyed on several occasions paying for youtube
| red except that a part of me really fundamentally doesn't
| trust that they'll keep to their statement that it will
| actually be ad free[0].
|
| As a comparison, I've paid for Spotify for a long time
| primarily to get rid of ads and was entirely ok with
| that.
|
| I certainly pay for dev tools on a yearly basis that cost
| me a similar level as $257 a year and so I feel like
| paying for what Alphabet offer in terms of map / video /
| search fits comfortably in that same bracket of cost to
| value that I'd be ok making that trade as well.
|
| I don't know if I'd pay themselves Alphabet that much,
| primarily because like with they Youtube example, what
| kind of a commitment[1] could they make that makes me
| believe that me paying them would mean they stop treating
| me as a product and as a customer instead? It sort of
| feels like that ship sailed a long time ago, ad money is
| very seductive it seems.
|
| - [0]: It also doesn't help that their recommendation
| engine seems to give worse recommendations over time, so
| a regular purge seems to be required to get back to
| reasonable recommendations.
|
| - [1]: This ends up being a fun thought experiment.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> what kind of a commitment[1] could they make that
| makes me believe that me paying them would mean they stop
| treating me as a product and as a customer instead?_
|
| I'm not sure they could make a credible commitment to
| that at this point. I'm not sure there is any viable way
| for them to transition, at scale, from their current
| business model to one where they just charge users
| directly for services those users want. But the latter
| business model is still there, waiting, and sooner or
| later I think someone will find a way to use it to take
| Google's market.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| The irony of promoting Brave in this thread.
| dralley wrote:
| No kidding.
| notyourday wrote:
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| https://cottonbureau.com/products/its-not-rico
| onion2k wrote:
| I don't think RICO applies, but section 2 of the Sherman Act
| (abuse of dominant position) might.
| mountainb wrote:
| Cranks just like bringing up RICO because it is so broad. But
| the government only uses RICO for the things it wants to, not
| the random stuff that cranks want the government to do. Most
| people think that the government is basically like Batman and
| just sits around waiting to get a call from someone who has
| found a crime. In reality, society is awash with (think of a
| random big number) multiples of what the government has the
| capacity to address, and it picks and chooses the targets
| that it wants to enforce against.
| jcranmer wrote:
| RICO _isn 't_ broad. The predicate acts of RICO are an
| explicitly enumerated list (see
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1961 for the
| full list). Then there's the tricky part that the defendant
| has to be doing that on behalf of a particular enterprise.
| (See https://www.popehat.com/2016/06/14/lawsplainer-its-
| not-rico-... for a fuller description).
|
| Most internet peanut gallery shouts of "RICO!" are not, in
| fact, RICO.
| xphilter wrote:
| I passed on a case like this years ago -- a restaurant claimed
| Google hijacked the listing, it turns out they had signed a B2B
| deal with some food delivery/ordering app that had, in the terms,
| the right to share this info with others, including Google. Good
| luck to the restaurant here, but they won't get the same benefit
| of the doubt consumers (sometimes) get when signing contracts.
| joijoi32joi32j wrote:
| robotcookies wrote:
| I had this happen to me. Went to order something for pickup from
| maps. I thought it was the restaurant's page but the order went
| through postmates. When I arrived to pick up my order, the staff
| seemed to think I was an employee of postmates.
|
| Anyway, when I got home I did some searching and found out the
| restaurant had a different webpage from what I ordered from. The
| prices I paid were a little higher than the actual business
| websites. It seems postmates charged me more, taking a cut while
| doing nothing to make the food or deliver it. What a parasitic
| business to inject yourself as a third party like that.
| kuang_eleven wrote:
| I had much the same problem, ordered from my favorite local
| Mexican place for delivery, but Doordash apparently had no
| agreement with the restaurant, despite holding themselves out
| as the restaurant. Instead, they posted a menu with incorrect
| items, incorrect prices and just sent someone to stand in line
| to order from them.
|
| Needless to say, the food was incorrectly ordered, an hour late
| and cold. To top it all off, they attempted to charge me for
| the difference in price. Luckily, I put a stop to this via my
| credit card, and have boycotted Doordash since.
|
| Unfortunately, this is not uncommon amongst the various food
| delivery companies, despite being obvious fraud.
| dawnerd wrote:
| There's been quite a few companies doing some growth hacking,
| or I guess straight up stealing by putting their url as the url
| for a restaurant. It's hard to trust anything Google maps tells
| me since there's no real source of truth.
|
| Zomato needs to be banned from Google maps.
| i67vw3 wrote:
| Zomato is the worst thing I have seen. I stopped using it and
| moved to Swiggy. To order from zomato, you need their app,
| you cannot order from their website. On swiggy, you can
| either order from their website or app.
|
| I like to order stuff of any service from their website.
| Usually, the play/app store apps are filled with ads,
| trackers, spyware.
| the_snooze wrote:
| >growth hacking
|
| This is just techbro euphemism for "lie to your users."
| tremon wrote:
| I thought it was a euphemism for "lie to your investors"?
| ajhurliman wrote:
| This particular instance is definitely lying to users, but
| in general "growth hacking" isn't necessarily so evil. Like
| adding "sent with Hotmail" at the bottom of the free email
| service, or offering a printable certificate of your
| store's Yelp rating to show off to in-person customers.
| bootlooped wrote:
| The merchant is able to set something on that page, the one with
| the ordering options, that would label their own website
| "Preferred by business". If you ever see it, it's fairly
| prominent. To me this almost totally invalidates the basis for
| the lawsuit.
|
| As an example look up Emmy Squared Pizza: East Village in NYC.
| walnutclosefarm wrote:
| Yet another example of the misleading attempts to capture
| business inquiries by intermediaries. This has long been the case
| in the hospitality industry, where third party bookers make their
| ads look so deceptively like you're going to the actual hotel
| website that I have trouble sorting them out, despite
| considerable knowledge of their tricks. Ditto insurance - you
| can't find clean links to Medicare services, or actual ACA
| insurance exchanges half the time, for the blizzard of brokers'
| links/ads that appear high in the search results.
|
| This is only partly Google's fault though - it's the brokers and
| other re-intermediaries really fueling it. They ought to be
| sanctioned along with Google.
| grumple wrote:
| This always bothers me. I won't click the "Order Online" button
| anymore. I'll look for the restaurants website (which often isn't
| the Website button either) and order directly.
|
| If I ran a restaurant, I would never partner with these platforms
| directly. Let them sell your food, but don't take a loss on the
| sale just so they can take some profit. I doubt there's much new
| customer acquisition through these platforms to justify the cost.
| soco wrote:
| I already do this for hotel bookings. I'm fed up with Google,
| Booking.com or whoever trying to trick me into paying them for
| zero added value.
| anaccountexists wrote:
| You can't directly book through Google, if I remember
| correctly. They'll kick you out to the business' site to do
| that.
|
| They're just an aggregator and get paid in referral fees. The
| value for you is in the aggregation engine.
| dawnerd wrote:
| The worst thing about hotel rates is the hotels themselves
| basically force you to go through a third party unless you
| want to pay their insane markups. You'd think they'd want you
| to book directly too...
| gameswithgo wrote:
| Olo can help restaurants get themselves on Google Food Ordering,
| and help them create their own online ordering systems, so you
| can get ahead of the hijackers.
| specialist wrote:
| If any one has model (draft) legislation to prohibit misc
| hijacking strategies, please share.
|
| I've chatted with my local reps (city & state), who sounded
| supportive. Figuring out some kind of policy proposal is on my To
| Do list.
| bootlooped wrote:
| It's easy to think of ways this backfires if written too
| broadly. Such as the record label claiming the local record
| shop is hijacking their search results and stealing their
| sales, they want them delisted so searches always go to the
| record label's online store.
| bogwog wrote:
| > It's easy to think of ways this backfires if written too
| broadly.
|
| That can (and often is, with unproductive outcomes) be said
| about everything.
| immibis wrote:
| Yes, and that's why politics is hard.
| naoqj wrote:
| >If the restaurant has a relationship with the food delivery
| company, it gets charged a fee. These fees can be so high--15 to
| 30 percent in many cases--that the restaurant has no hope of
| making a profit from the order.
|
| It's Google's fault that the owners of these restaurants don't
| know how to use Excel?
| danuker wrote:
| Indeed, owners should instruct staff to ask the ones picking up
| the order what they paid, and write it down.
| kazinator wrote:
| The unaffiliated ponies picking up the order are paying the
| restaurant whatever the restaurant is charging.
| mring33621 wrote:
| It is Google's fault that they are forcing an elderly Thai
| couple, who have owned a restaurant in Wrigleyville for 20
| years, to spend extra time and effort to figure out how to
| protect their meager profits from internet-based poachers.
| naoqj wrote:
| That's an appeal to emotion, not a rational argument.
|
| Restaurant owners should know the maximum fee that the
| delivery apps are charging (since they are signing the
| contract) and adjust prices accordingly. If they are "an
| elderly Thai couple" (because as we know old people and Thais
| are idiots) that has managed to reach old age without
| bankrupting their restaurant, surely they can calculate the
| impact of the fees of the contracts that they sign on their
| business.
| klyrs wrote:
| To deny the impact of emotional circumstance on
| decisionmaking is itself highly irrational.
| mring33621 wrote:
| How about this then? Many restaurant owners, including the
| ones I mentioned, are unaware of the existence of these
| unofficial ordering channels (websites, phone numbers).
| They claim that they did not sign up for any of this.
|
| My wife recently was tricked into calling one of these fake
| numbers on a fake, but official-looking restaurant website.
| The person on the other end pretended to be the restaurant
| that we wanted to order from. But my wife grew suspicious
| when the person knew nothing about the menu.
|
| You keep talking about contracts. But simply saying that
| 'you signed a contract' does not make it true.
| naoqj wrote:
| Are you saying that these restaurants are selling food at
| 30% discount without even knowing what they are doing?
| That makes absolutely no sense.
| cromd wrote:
| What are you saying learning Excel would solve for the owners?
| (honest question)
| anaccountexists wrote:
| Google is the closest group to the consumer here, but the actual
| bad actors are DoorDash / GrubHub / etc. The delivery companies
| add the restaurants to their sites without permission, then
| Google indexes those pages and provides smart widgets for them.
|
| Take away the delivery companies' bad practices, you take away
| the Google experience the restaurants don't like.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| If DoorDash and GrubHub are the bad actors, and what they're
| doing is well enough known that people on HN know about it, why
| can't Google adjust their algorithms accordingly? Hell, with
| two big companies like that they could just sanction them
| directly for subverting the algorithms.
|
| I think it makes the most sense to hold Google responsible here
| since they are in the best position to solve the problem and
| they're not showing any inclination to do so.
| dontreact wrote:
| Funny how there is pushback on the YCombinator forum to an
| attempt to hold accountable a YCombinator company that
| actually has a direct hand in doing this to restaurants.
|
| How would Google know which postings are fraudulent and which
| aren't? The vast majority of these postings are
| fine/legitimate/consented. Why does it have to be Google that
| spends time and energy going after the bad actors, and if
| they don't, they become one?
|
| In other words, I really don't see how Google is in the best
| position to figure out which restaurants have been posted
| without the restaurant's consent. I think that would be the
| companies putting up the original post.
| david38 wrote:
| Trivial. DoorDash has been caught doing this. Add this to
| TOS. If DoorDash persists, remove them from all searches
| until they prove they have fixed the issue and pay a
| penalty for bad behavior.
| mdoms wrote:
| > How would Google know which postings are fraudulent and
| which aren't?
|
| There's a very very simple algorithm for this.
| Do I have a direct business relationship with this company?
| | |-> Yes -> take orders on their behalf
| |-> No -> Do not take orders on their behalf
| dontreact wrote:
| I thought it was Grubhub/Doordash actually taking the
| orders, Google is just providing a link to their service.
| mdoms wrote:
| Google has a big blue button that says "make an order".
| Sounds like they're taking orders to me.
| kuang_eleven wrote:
| Honestly, if Doordash is a known bad actor (and it is),
| Google just just blacklist all results from them. That will
| hurt Doordash _far_ more than it hurts Google or consumers.
| noasaservice wrote:
| https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-
| undocumented#percei...
|
| "Additionally, founders of YC companies see each other's
| usernames show up in orange, which -- although not an
| explicit benefit -- does allow fellow YC founders to
| immediately identify one another in discussions."
|
| There it is, in a nutshell, how company owners are able to
| brigade as a collective group.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > How would Google know which postings are fraudulent and
| which aren't?
|
| Oh, that's the best part. Google doesn't have to. DoorDash
| and GrubHub know. So Google can offer to derank _all_ their
| listings and offerings _or_ they can police them
| themselves.
|
| "In two weeks, Google will be taking action against
| companies that regularly interject their own phone numbers
| in place of actual brick-and-mortar locations in an attempt
| to use SEO to siphon off sales. We look forward to our
| partners policing their listings to ensure all colistings
| are voluntary."
| notreallyserio wrote:
| Same reason Google engineers don't delist sites like
| gitmemory and don't stop writing bots that automatically can
| people's accounts without recourse. They just don't care
| enough to leverage their vast power.
| judge2020 wrote:
| No single Google employee can solve the "no recourse" part
| of accounts being removed when they trigger automated abuse
| systems, unless you expect them to be the only ones to
| maintain the support inbox for that recourse. Any change
| for the better has to be done by committee, legal, PR, etc.
| and unauthorized changes are surely going to be cause for
| termination and/or criminal proceedings against the rogue
| employee, depending on how much they changed things without
| permission.
| notreallyserio wrote:
| I'm not talking about rogue employees, I'm talking about
| the team that was tasked with creating the system. Google
| pays them millions because Google needs them, that gives
| engineers a lot of leverage.
|
| I don't know the specifics, though -- maybe the proposed
| project was much much worse and this is what the
| engineers were able to negotiate. But I kinda doubt it.
| pronlover723 wrote:
| Not excusing anyone but, AFAICT, DoorDash and GrubHub are
| extremely popular. Google is just giving consumers what they
| want. I have friends who eat > 50% of their meals via
| DoorDash. I live in an apartment complex and see tons of
| orders coming in. So, maybe it sucks for the restaurants and
| that should be fix but it seems hard to knock Google for
| doing what their metrics say people actually want. Their
| metrics probably say people want to order food and so they
| tried to provide that info. There no need for to apply "evil"
| motivations. Good intentions gets the same result.
| Retric wrote:
| Just because someone somewhere hosts a website saying X doesn't
| mean Google must assume their an authoritative source.
|
| Google could temporarily delist those sites and instantly get
| them to stop.
| krnlpnc wrote:
| No, Google is far from helpless in detection of these types of
| issues. Business owners should be able to claim and manage the
| features which are enabled on their accounts, and nothing
| should be enabled by default beyond the basic contact info and
| possibly reviews.
| Jasper_ wrote:
| No, Google is part of the problem here too.
| https://orderfood.google.com/
| specialp wrote:
| I was just in a coffee shop the other day and a man was telling
| the clerk he called in an order, and they took it, and he is
| there to pick it up. The shop had no record of this, and the
| number that he called was not their number. He said that is
| really weird, I talked to someone and they took my order.
|
| I remembered the dark pattern deployed by GrubHub, and googled
| the shop. Sure enough the number was the same as the one the man
| called. The shop had no idea that this was going on, and
| apparently GrubHub failed to forward that order. This is being
| done with little or no indication to either party that someone is
| in the middle.
| ascagnel_ wrote:
| Isn't this fraud, on the part of Google, Grub Hub, or both? The
| customer thinks they're dealing with the business, but one of
| these two services has MITM'd the service, passing themselves
| off as the business.
| kuang_eleven wrote:
| Yes. We should be contacting local attorney generals or
| equivalent.
| devmor wrote:
| They have a solid point. I've had a couple different experiences
| where I clicked on a restaurant on Google Maps and thought I was
| looking at their official menu - ordered some food and called the
| restaurant when it never arrived only to find out they never got
| the order and don't use that delivery service.
| akersten wrote:
| At the end of the day do these restaurants not cook and sell the
| food, or is Google running a secret shadow kitchen and swapping
| out the cuisine too?
|
| If you put a service on the Internet (restaurant website, or
| making order pickup available from food delivery service), it's
| going to be consumed. You really have no right to complain about
| how - Firefox, text based browser, screen reader, printed and
| physically mailed, or wrapped in another website.
| Interoperability is a beautiful thing, and if anything, should be
| made _more_ legal.
|
| Your restaurant website probably isn't accessible either. At
| least Google's is.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| No one's asserting they're swapping out the food.
|
| I'd bet it's more on the "trademark violation" end of things.
| akersten wrote:
| > No one's asserting they're swapping out the food.
|
| With the amount of vitriol in this thread one wouldn't have
| been blamed for thinking they were, is my point. We call
| ourselves Hackers and we're mad about this?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Yes, I'd be mad if someone was using the name of my
| business to siphon off 30% of my revenue.
| akersten wrote:
| To be charged a 30% fee, is part of the business
| agreement that the restaurant voluntarily entered with
| that food delivery company though?? I'm gonna leave this
| thread now, complaining about this is just nuts...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > The restaurant voluntarily entered a relationship with
| that food delivery company though??
|
| In many cases, no.
|
| https://www.eater.com/21537215/restaurants-sue-third-
| party-d...
|
| > Grubhub has explicitly made this false partnership part
| of their business strategy. Last October, CEO Matt
| Maloney said the company would be piloting a new
| initiative of adding more restaurants to its searchable
| database without entering into an official partnership
| with them, so customers would believe they had more
| delivery options with Grubhub, and wouldn't switch to
| competitors.
|
| Re: your edit...
|
| > To be charged a 30% fee...
|
| If you don't have a deal with them, they can raise prices
| to get their cut. Shitty customer experience; they'll
| likely blame the restaurant for gouging them. Same if
| they list items not available from an old menu;
| restaurant gets blamed.
|
| There are some funny arbitrage opportunities with the
| non-consensual listings:
| https://www.readmargins.com/p/doordash-and-pizza-
| arbitrage
| akersten wrote:
| More restaurants to the database but that doesn't mean
| those restaurants are paying the fee. Likely loss leaders
| for GrubHub.
|
| The listing fee mentioned in this Ars article says it is
| only if you have a relationship, which makes sense.
|
| > If the restaurant has a relationship with the food
| delivery company, it gets charged a fee.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Likely loss leaders for GrubHub.
|
| Using someone else's trademark for your business in this
| fashion is still likely a trademark violation, even if
| you're losing money on it.
| akersten wrote:
| Does this same logic apply to something like Visa
| concierge service (or other procurement company), where
| they show you the brand item and store logo from where it
| comes, and then go buy it for you? Why can they do that,
| but not Google?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I think there's a significant distinction between "I'd
| like to order food from restaurant X, I'll Google them"
| versus a concierge service. I can't speak for Visa's, but
| Amex's has never been misleading in this sort of fashion.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| The restaurants don't want people thinking their prices
| are 30% higher than they actually are. When Grubhub adds
| restaurants without permission they raise prices and
| often list items that aren't on the menu. Consumers order
| and blame the restaurant when things aren't perfect. You
| can see why the restaurant would be mad?
| Spivak wrote:
| I think this is the grey area. I don't see any inherent
| problem with any of
|
| * hiring someone to place an order at a restaurant for
| you and deliver it.
|
| * that service adjusting the consumer facing prices for
| individual items since they're really getting food from
| the delivery service and the restaurant is just a
| supplier.
|
| * that service using the name, logo, and menu of the
| restaurant for the purposes of advertising that they can
| deliver there. Lots of businesses will be like "we buy
| $this_part from $here -- here's your options."
|
| * the delivery service having no business relationship
| with the delivery provider.
|
| If you're gonna fix anything it would be requiring that
| it's clear that you're not ordering direct from the
| restaurant and the delivery service takes all the
| responsibility but that's pretty minor.
|
| The tech world equivalent is upstream maintainers getting
| bug reports from downstream distro builds of their
| software and we're normally not like "we must regulate
| that Debian has a business relationship with all OSS they
| package."
| masswerk wrote:
| If true, what is this authenticity of origin discussion all
| about, after all? Why is Google promoting https in the search
| ranking? Why should users know with whom they are interacting
| with on a contract level?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-03-14 23:01 UTC)