
TripAdvisor cuts hundreds of jobs after Google competition bites - b3n
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-23/tripadvisor-cuts-hundreds-of-jobs-after-google-competition-bites
======
ronilan
Reposting myself on the subject[1]:

For anyone not aware (or confused by Silicon Valley tradition on constantly
rewriting origin stories), TripAdvisor started in the dot com bubble as a B2B
site. They clearly stated their business model was to provide reviews to other
sites. Only that after the bubble burst, TripAdvisor had none left. They then
basically invented modern SEO: long descriptive URLs, pages pulled out of a db
with keyword variations in mind, constantly refreshing content with user
submissions, and, the killer, buying links to influence Google’s naive ranking
methods (which quickly evolved this to buying entire sites for their SEO
potential). The billion dollar public valuation is entirely the result of a
decade long SEO play.

(Source: was in online travel related business at the time. Was the first to
buy links form Matt at SeatGuru, later acquired by TripAdvisor)

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21516006](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21516006)

~~~
ProAm
The truth is most companies tend to last ~20 years (from mom and pop to larger
ones) if they are successful. You're lucky if you make it further. This is one
of those that isn't going to last much further.

~~~
Marazan
Google is eating the travel industry.

Search for anything travel related and you get pages of Google products and
advertising widgets before you get to the first organic result.

The change over the last 5 years is huge.

~~~
allovernow
When I first found Google flights a couple years ago it was ahead of all the
other trip aggregators and unbelievably cheaper too. I think it forced the
cheapo tickets craze because I had never seen $50 cross country tickets before
that, and it practically destroyed all the little deals and gentlemens
agreements that the other aggregators undoubtedly had.

~~~
Marazan
Google Flights lack inventory (as they are powered by a GDS so anyone not
filing to that GDS will be missing) and to get their incredible speed they
cache and calculate prices which results in frequent pricing misses as well.

~~~
MLpractitioner
Pretty soon they'll have enough traffic nobody will be able to afford to
fillng the GDS

------
threeseed
It really hasn't been covered enough just how much Google has replaced organic
search results with their own features.

In some cases it's almost all of the above the fold real estate and for
shopping they are starting to take over the checkout experience as well.

It's significantly reducing organic traffic and turning e-commerce sites into
Google suppliers.

~~~
mattmanser
It's been going on a long time, Google's been killing off aggregators by
cannibalising their market for almost a decade now.

I do wonder how sustainable it is, previously these aggregators did lots of
things at Google's request, cleaning the noise out and laying everything out
in nice data-annotations. More fool them, it turns out.

Google cross-references them all, builds their 'own' data and drives them all
out of business.

It's pretty scary how much of the digital high streets Google has ruthlessly
stolen from us all, and imposing a huge tax for doing pretty much sod all.

I occasionally wonder if anyone would every have the balls to nationalise the
search engine, it should be a public utility, not infested with ads covering
90% of the first page as it's become. I'm even semi-serious :)

At the very least I wouldn't mind a nice ruling that Google are now
deceptively calling themselves a search engine, and that they can now only
show one ad per 10 real results per page.

~~~
h2odragon
"Nationalised search service" ... interesting thought. Legions of Librarians,
finally compensated justly and lauded for their heroism. Wonder if they'd get
uniforms and "be all you can be" recruiting campaigns too.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Something like DuckDuckGo operated like Let's Encrypt. If it can be done for
key management, why not search corpus? What's the annual cost, $10MM? Maybe a
bit more, but not crazy expensive. Someone with search experience (ChuckMcM or
greglindahl) would be able to say with more certainty.

~~~
phreeza
If you want to do something like DDG, proxying some other search engines
results, a point of reference could be Ecosia, which publishes financial
reports. It looks like they operate on somewhere in the range of 12M/year.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosia)
[https://de.blog.ecosia.org/ecosia-finanzberichte-
baumplanzbe...](https://de.blog.ecosia.org/ecosia-finanzberichte-
baumplanzbelege/) (in German)

------
systematical
Google is pretty much taking your shit nowadays and there is nothing you can
do about it. That shit is either a company you built or a product of theirs
that you used. They are not a search company, they are a conglomerate. They'll
buy you or break you. It's funny when they fail though isn't it? Remember
Google+? Who lead that initiative? What a travesty that was. Outside of Gmail,
Google's UIs really do suck.

But back to the point. There really isn't anything wrong with what they are
doing, they are a typical business. Again, nothing wrong with that. They do
stuff for their own self-interest. They are not your friends. Organic search
results get in the way of advertising.

~~~
Johnny555
_Google is pretty much taking your shit nowadays and there is nothing you can
do about it_

That sounds like Amazon -- if you've got a hot selling product on Amazon, you
can expect them to copy it and start selling it under the Amazon brand:

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-20/got-a-
hot...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-20/got-a-hot-seller-
on-amazon-prepare-for-e-tailer-to-make-one-too)

~~~
troysand
Same applies to Microsoft as well. Remember Ami Pro, WordPerfect?

~~~
blackrock
Isn’t Word Perfect still used in the legal profession, because of how it
aligns the text with precision during print out? (Or something like that.)

------
mfer
Google controls search. Google launches a competitor to a web service
presented through search. Competitor takes enough of a hit layoffs are needed.

This screams of a problem. Especially for consumers and a competitive market.
The kind of thing that traditionally caused governments to step in.

~~~
the_reformation
Google launched a service consumers preferred. What's the issue? That they
have a sustained competitive advantage?

~~~
throwawaybbb
Imagine if 70% of roads were privately owned by one company. That company,
call it roadle, opened a restaurant chain. There is free parking in front of
all roadle restaurants. There are always roadworks around all non roadle
restaurants.

This is what search is like today.

~~~
cycrutchfield
Not at all the same comparison. People that don't like Google or their
additions to organic search results can simply switch to another competitor.

~~~
mamurphy
>Not at all the same comparison.

No, their comparison was perfect! They said roadle owned 70% of roads, not all
of them. Sure, businesses can hope that they get their traffic from non-Google
search, but if customers are going to Google for 70+% of search, that's a
doomed business strategy.

Their point isn't that Google is bad for consumers, it's that it's unfair for
businesses if Google is driving all the search to its own properties that you
are trying to compete with.

~~~
ironmagma
Google is essentially a piece of international infrastructure at this point.
If it went out of existence, the productivity of millions of people would take
at least a minor nose dive and the funnels for user conversion for businesses
would change drastically overnight leading to a macroscopic restructuring of
business priorities.

------
Rebelgecko
That's a bummer. I've found that TripAdvisor reviews tend to have a higher
signal to noise ratio than some other sites (including Google's own reviews,
where you can tell a lot of the reviews are just being cranked out so that
power users can get points and "level up")

~~~
rapnie
They are no angels either, or at least their daughter company. Two weeks ago
TheFork featured in Dutch TV program Rambam where they proved that they boost
restaurant ratings. They listed their own fake restaurant (possible, no
problem) and gave their own reviews, trying to become lowest rated in the
ranking.

Giving rebates on couverts may boost your ranking too.

Restaurant owners interviewed are not too happy as well. They feel forced to
subscribe because of popularity of the site, but have to pay 2 euro per person
per reservation. Also it happens that without their knowledge TheFork arranges
the Reservation button on Google search, so they flow through their platform.

edit: To clarify the boosting. If according to ratings the average should be a
5.2 then TheFork would up that and make it e.g. a 6.5

~~~
conradfr
I used to work on the search team at TheFork years ago (we were already a
TripAdvisor subsidiary) and don't know about the current practices but back
then there was no foul play about the ratings, which is not even the default
sorting on the site.

Also, not specifically related to TheFork (because I don't remember...), do
all ratings should always have the same weight? Are old ratings as relevant as
newer?

If you want to book a romantic dinner are ratings from groups as relevant as
the ones from other couples?

Is a new restaurant with two reviews at 7/10 average the same as another one
with 200 reviews at 7/10 average ?

There's more to it than first apparent.

Example: [http://www.evanmiller.org/how-not-to-sort-by-average-
rating....](http://www.evanmiller.org/how-not-to-sort-by-average-rating.html)

~~~
eropple
I used to work at TripAdvisor, and I can corroborate—while I was there the
focus was really heavily on fighting back fake reviews and presenting the ones
we got as effectively as possible. You can ding them for a lot (the UI has
always been kinda painful) but, unlike Yelp, I don’t think they are or have
been dirty.

------
superbrane
This is what happens when you pay huge amounts of money on Google Ads and
traffic. They notice that you must be quite profitable if you afford to pay so
much, so they come for your market. It will happen more and more and the more
you pay to Google the more you help them take you out of the market.

~~~
threeseed
Actually this is all about Amazon.

Apparently in some countries users are going to straight to Amazon for their
shopping searches and bypassing Google entirely.

~~~
luckylion
Isn't that a general thing? I hate the quality of Amazon's internal search,
but Google's results for shopping related queries are just atrocious in my
country. There's barely-related Amazon-Products on the top 5 places, SEO spam
on the next 10, a few shops on pages 2/3 and then scam shops.

------
jbverschoor
The problem is not google. It’s trip advisor itself. It’s simply not helpful
anymore.

Fake reviews, and they’re pushing paid events etc using dark patterns.. it
wasn’t like that some years ago

Love the lonely planet

~~~
pradn
Whenever I want to look up the highlights of a place, I look up it's Lonely
Planet page. They are written well and have good pictures. The way to compete
against a million random reviewers is by upping quality and forming a brand.
In some places, Lonely Planet is the only company providing accurate and
complete information. It's marvelous.

~~~
9nGQluzmnq3M
Unfortunately Lonely Planet's old business model of getting people to pay for
content itself has basically stopped working now that there's a million free
digital competitors, and they've yet to come up with a replacement that does.

~~~
jbverschoor
The app is really really cheap. Fair to say underpriced, especially compared
to the books. No ads. Quality content. A good structure about essentials and
the neighborhoods.

------
neves
I really prefer TripAdvisor data and reviews, but it is really difficult to
compete to a monopoly. Google also is better at search and integrates better
with their own service.

If at least they would allow me to download any city data in advance in their
app. It used be possible to download the main cities in advance, but now you
must have internet always on. They think that in any country you have internet
everywhere.

~~~
eropple
Interestingly enough, I’m in Italy this week and here Apple Maps sources most
of its data from TripAdvisor. I’ve visited their site (clicks on Maps go to
it) more this week than in the last five years.

They’ve been a lot more helpful than Yelp reviews etc., too.

------
s3r3nity
> Google has also crammed the top of its mobile search results with more ads.
> This has forced many companies, including TripAdvisor, to buy more ads from
> the search giant to keep online traffic flowing.

That seems wild to me: not only does Google get more $ from ads, but they have
this massive power to wipe out competitors this way, with minimal
repercussions. Two-birds, one stone.

~~~
dannyr
>That seems wild to me: not only does Google get more $ from ads, but they
have this massive power to wipe out competitors this way, with minimal
repercussions. Two-birds, one stone.

Crazy thing is they are using their competitors money to wipe away
competition.

~~~
buboard
three birds

------
dba7dba
Any business without physical inventory that can be automated in a way to
sell/buy should really worry about Google. Eventually Google will come for
that market as their new crop of managers/execs will want to make the number
to get their bonus and move up the ladder.

I know a guy who used to work at tripadvisor years ago. At the time Google was
trying to start up their own hotel search business but they didn't have the
reviews. So Google was initially using reviews submitted to tripadvisor by
tripadvisor's reviews. I believe there had been prior agreement for Google to
use tripadvisor's reviews for a fee/beter-search-ranking in return? Anyhow,
tripadivisor didn't like what was happening so was in the process of telling
google that they will stop the arrangement.

And a google exec in the meeting threatened tripadivisor execs that google
will lower tripadivisor in the search results, if tripadvisor did stop the
arrangement.

This bit was apparently shared in a regularly scheduled company wide meeting.

~~~
bobbiechen
There's a similar story from Jeremy Stoppelman about Google scraping Yelp
content in 2010 even though their licensing agreement ended in 2007.

Source is the Senate Antitrust Committee hearing in 2011 on Google's
dominance, the BI link below includes the exhibits as well.

[https://www.businessinsider.com/yelp-ceo-on-
google-2011-9](https://www.businessinsider.com/yelp-ceo-on-google-2011-9)

~~~
onlyrealcuzzo
I'm sure they'll get fined $1M in 2036 or something. That'll even it all out.

~~~
objektif
There is a name for that right? "Be fucking evil if it doesn't cost much" or
something like that.

------
CodeSheikh
"...The company had just over 3,800 staff at the end of September.." I am
surprised why they need such high number of staff when the functionality of
the website is limited to content, reviews, search itineraries. Unless they
hire field agents and ask them go inquire and write about a new place.

~~~
kevinstubbs
This along with the comment about them being in the SP500 got me interested.
They are doing more than just the site we all immediately thought of when we
saw "TripAdvisor". There's also "InstantBooking" [0], widgets, tools, a
platform (it seems) for marketing/buying sponsored listings, analytics, "photo
tools", and probably more. All of that was just from what they listed on
products. Besides this, they are surely doing research, prototyping, and
otherwise developing products that haven't/may never see the light of day.

Furthermore, they seem to do a lot of marketing which for them is the obvious
stuff like online advertising (probably in-house team), conferences, and I'm
guessing also local events. They also do non-obvious stuff such as branding
one of little shops inside the Toronto Pearson International Airport [1].

Finally, looking at LinkedIn, here's the breakdown of employees.

1,100 sales 939 engineering 768 operations 652 bizdev and so on. Full
screenshot here: [https://imgur.com/a/JCoibId](https://imgur.com/a/JCoibId)

Obviously, there must be some overlap in job functions here, otherwise people
are over-reporting that they are employees at the company (LinkedIn claims
5,679 employees). 160 people doing finance doesn't make sense, for instance
(well at least imo).

The only conclusion I can make from this data is that they aren't having
thousands of people working on just the main website. I'm inclined to guess
that they ARE probably bloated, but without knowing anything besides some
marketing copy for their other projects, it's hard to say with any confidence.

[0]
[https://www.tripadvisor.com/InstantBooking](https://www.tripadvisor.com/InstantBooking)
[1] [https://www.torontopearson.com/en/while-you-are-
here/toronto...](https://www.torontopearson.com/en/while-you-are-here/toronto-
airport-shops/tripadvisor-store-t1-after-canada-d20)

~~~
topkai22
From TripAdvisors "About" page:

The subsidiaries and affiliates of TripAdvisor, Inc. own and operate a
portfolio of websites and businesses, including the following travel media
brands: www.airfarewatchdog.com, www.bokun.io, www.bookingbuddy.com,
www.cruisecritic.com, www.familyvacationcritic.com,
www.flipkey.com,www.thefork.com (including www.lafourchette.com,
www.eltenedor.com, and www.restorando.com), www.holidaylettings.co.uk,
www.holidaywatchdog.com, www.housetrip.com, www.jetsetter.com, www.niumba.com,
www.onetime.com, www.oyster.com, www.seatguru.com, www.smartertravel.com,
www.tingo.com, www.vacationhomerentals.com and www.viator.com.

That's a ton of subsidiary companies and explains a lot IMO.

------
rblatz
Trip Advisor has been fairly hit and miss for me. The star ratings especially
for hotels have a weird value judgement in them that isn't at all congruent
with mine. I'll see run down crappy hotels with 5 stars while much much nicer
hotels with better amenities and locations are rated with 3 stars.

Some way to specify the profile of the rater's you care about would be a huge
improvement. Things like traveling with children, back-packing, splurging on
vacation, would be helpful criteria to make the reviews more relevant and
informative to me.

~~~
ym705
check out what i'm making at [https://dokomaps.com](https://dokomaps.com) a
simple travel recommender based on lists of what people shared previously.
Just find someone that matches your interest and follow their recommandations

~~~
Applethief
Very nice site!

------
jorblumesea
Pretty much every site that depends on Google search and organic traffic is in
trouble. Trip Advisor, Expedia, Booking.com, most OTAs. Their lunch is being
eaten.

~~~
toephu2
Yup, next up: Yelp.

Personally I stopped using TripAdvisor in favor of Google Maps. Also stopped
using Yelp in favor of Google Maps. It's all integrated so nicely, no need to
open another app for reviews.

~~~
stickfigure
I'm as surprised as anyone, but Yelp seems to be holding on. G's reviews just
aren't as good, and don't seem to be as critical. Not sure if it's just easier
to game? Pretty much everything on Google maps is a 4.0.

~~~
dannyr
Yelp hasn't grown outside the US though while Google Maps/Local has gotten
bigger worldwide.

------
vassy
I eat out and travel a lot, I rarely use TripAdvisor anymore. When I want to
find a decent restaurant nearby I open Google Maps, for hotels booking.com
reviews haven't failed me yet. I mostly use TripAdvisor when I want to be more
specific with the reviews eg. filter by couples in winter

------
eljimmy
Oddly enough they were head-hunting super intensely last year. I wonder if
they were doing that to hire devs for lower pay in order to let go more senior
individuals to save money...

------
milkers
How can I read this article, it is behind a paywall?

~~~
tim333
Try deleting cookies? (click the padlock by the url in Chrome)

------
eggie5
this killed Trivago too

~~~
travelbyphone
I see a ton of Trivago ads on tv for many years now, but I never used it, nor
do I ever heard of a friend using it or recommending it

~~~
Maxious
> The [Federal Court of Australia] ruled that from at least December 2016,
> Trivago misled consumers by representing its website would quickly and
> easily help users identify the cheapest rates available for a given hotel.

> In fact, Trivago used an algorithm which placed significant weight on which
> online hotel booking site paid Trivago the highest cost-per-click fee in
> determining its website rankings and often did not highlight the cheapest
> rates for consumers.

[https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/trivago-misled-
consume...](https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/trivago-misled-consumers-
about-hotel-room-rates)

------
buboard
why do people keep having their content for free for google to use? it doesn't
make sense anymore. the google web social contract is broken, there is no tit
for tat anymore. only paywall sites get it right now.

~~~
Hokusai
I have added from pictures to missing places into Google. For me, the tit for
tat is to help other travellers to find interesting places, to not get lost or
to know what to expect when in a foreign country/city.

But, I always contribute similar content to Wikipedia/Wikicommons. Because I
see that as a more fitting philosophy for sharing knowledge. The type of
information and the format is not the same, thou.

Google is just practical. It is frustrating to plan a visit to a museum in a
city that I will spend one day to find out that has been closed for half a
year.

So, I agree as I have my own self-doubts about giving things for free to
Google when they are going to use that data to send me or others more targeted
advertisements.

~~~
buboard
i probably should clarify, i was referring to businesses, not people. Right
now, opening up your website to google, is basically an invitation to steal
your content. Paywalls are the only way to keep them from doing it.

