
Yelp Walks Away From Google Deal, And Half A Billion Dollars - vaksel
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/20/yelp-walks-away-from-google-deal-and-half-a-billion-dollars/
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abijlani
Yelp is not doing anything revolutionary. Before Yelp there was city search.
Yelp came along and improved on what city search had done. Who is to say a
better Yelp won't come along. I think they will regret walking away from this
deal in the near future. For a very recent example look at Friendster.
Although I hope I'm wrong.

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brown9-2
Not to quibble but is what happened to Friendster really _very recent_? Feels
like ages ago.

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dzlobin
[http://www.downloadsquad.com/2009/12/10/malaysian-company-
mo...](http://www.downloadsquad.com/2009/12/10/malaysian-company-mol-buys-
friendster-in-other-news-friendster/)

Friendster was bought this month for more money then should ever have been
spent buying something nobody uses.

~~~
stcredzero
(Than)

Lots of people are still quite invested in Friendster. Facebook somehow used
the college connection to one-up them in "cool." Then they expanded beyond
college/high school.

Lesson: don't trust social networking websites.

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aresant
Google is executing their business plan of trying to 100% own the web.

Recent aquisitions are positioned to own the underlying top 10 search results
in every category they can get their hands on.

I'm glad that yelp, top of the list for many local searches, is holding out.

And yes, I know they've got a pile of cash and they should use it to improve
margins in underlying biz, but still this just seems like a continued march to
monopoly.

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axod
I very much doubt they want to own 100% of the web. Only the profitable bits
that fit with their ongoing strategies. Yelp obviously ties into a lot of the
good stuff they're doing, OTOH yelp is pretty unheard of outside the US afaik.

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ojbyrne
So the story here is ... Techcrunch published a story about an acquisition
that turned out to have no basis in fact. TMZ seems like a more reliable
source for gossip.

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_pius
_TMZ seems like a more reliable source for gossip._

TMZ isn't a good example. When it comes to breaking celebrity news, they
actually exercise a great deal of journalistic integrity and restraint.
They're very reliable and very well-sourced.

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ojbyrne
I understand what you're saying, but you seem to have supported my argument.
TMZ _is_ a better source.

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_pius
My comment was meant to be agnostic to the merits of your argument. While
we're talking about it, though, I think that this particular situation
(reporting the Google-Yelp acquisition talks) is actually a bad example as
well.

TechCrunch reported that Google and Yelp were in talks for an acquisition. As
far as I know, that is true and TechCrunch broke the story with original
reporting.

Then TechCrunch reported that Yelp walked away and talks broke down. As far as
I know, that is also true and again they broke the story with original
reporting.

Remaining agnostic to your claim about TechCrunch, how does this situation
support the argument that they are not reliable?

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ojbyrne
How many other times have techcrunch reported "company x in late stages of
being acquired by Google/Yahoo/Microsoft" followed by "Talks for company x
being acquired break off?" I'd suggest quite a few. I realize that this can
actually happen, but if it happens often enough then the story becomes non-
news.

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discojesus
Are they crazy? They could have made an awful movie with that money!

~~~
krav
That one made me laugh!

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presty
is anyone else tired of seeing all the techcrunch submissions pasted in hn?

this discussion has been had probably a year ago, but it seems like it's
getting worse again.. seriously, why?

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metra
Why does it matter that it's from TC? What's important is the story. How is
this the top comment? Does no one here give a shit about the actual story?

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palish
How old is Jeremy Stoppelman?

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hackworth
31

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leej
yelp may be onto something but i think they dont realize that goog can kill
them by applying a "mapquest".

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sounddust
Sure, but it's also important to realize that Google Maps was a rare success
in a string of mostly failed projects/acquisitions (Orkut, Knol, Picasa,
Google Video, etc).. I'd argue that Google's biggest successes were in areas
in which the previous leaders failed to innovate for years (Mapquest,
Hotmail), whereas Yelp is a very active company in a constant state of
improvement/innovation. If I were Yelp, I'd be more concerned about Google
doing something which would cause it to lose placement in search results.

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rubyrescue
Yelp is, from my observations, anything but active. They haven't innovated in
terms of UI or features in probably two years. Even geographies have been slow
to develop - UK took a long time to appear.

In fact, they're oddly static - the number of reviewed restaurants and stores
has increased quite slowly for most cities, they haven't done a good job
pushing into smaller markets.

Admittedly this is my anecdotal observation but i've been following yelp
pretty closely since they launched and honestly up until the Google
acquisition attempt, i was wondering if they were short on cash because they
seem to spend so little energy on product/design/site and there seemed to be a
bit of desperation in the whole 'yelpscam.com' accusations, which appear to be
legitimate.

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ramanujan
What about the IPhone virtual reality app? I've found that very useful and
quite innovative.

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newhouseb
that was me. thanks :)

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sree_nair
Never know how this will play out. Would they Become another Google (who
refused yahoo's offer and became better for it) Or Friendster (refusing
googles offer but lost out to Myspace & facebook) . Only time will tell.

And I Do not understand this views of "Getting aquired is bad" for start up. I
think it is up to the founders to decide what is good/bad for them.

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alexro
If they have funding (presumably they do) then it isn't that simple for the
founders I think.

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pegobry
Good for them! Getting acquired is not victory for a startup, building a
sustainable business for the long term is.

~~~
sunny_s
I think, what a victory for a startup is really depends on what it's founders'
think.. for some it may be acquisition

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ThinkWriteMute
Why is it when Google enters the picture into anything many geeks turn into
tinfoil hat homeless people?

"The googles! It's coming for your body!"

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dzlobin
While I agree with the other comments, I'm going to call this a dick move of
the week. I understand that google wasn't buying yelp just for the sake of
owning yelp, but Jesus Christ, yelp is a terrible terrible website for reviews
of anything(I can only vouch for the NYC yelp). It's a pretty widely regarded
fact here that yelp reviews do not count for shit, thus making the website a
joke. They should have taken the money and ran.

Edit: If you don't agree, feel free to browse the reviews of NYC restaurants
for some great advice by hundreds of thousands of self-proclaimed culinary
experts and trendy hipsters who's idea of a good bar is one with big game
hunter in the back and a 95% mustache rate.

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zackattack
What would you recommend in NYC instead of Yelp?

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defen
nymag.com is pretty good.

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joubert
Seconded. NY Mag is far more in the know, and current.

