A Google Yelp Analysis Misses a Big One
December 20, 2009
Googzilla has had enough of this social network stuff. A misfire with Orkut left Googzilla uncertain. With interest in things social rising, the Mountain View math club is on the move. Real time search results now appear in Google results lists. Yesterday, the pundits and poobahs were alight with rumors of Googzilla’s gobbling Yelp.com, a restaurant review service on steroids. My goslings tell me that Yelp is more than restaurant reviews. I believe them. I just don’t use the site because Yelp does not do a bang up job on eateries in the high tech capital of Kentucky where I live.
Silicon Alley Insider ran an interesting with-it, video story called “Google Wants To Buy Yelp For These 6 Reasons” in the pure Google format; that is, a with it person just talking to a digital video camera. The idea is that serialized information is really useful. Even better, talking is easy for some poobahs. Best of all, a goof up can be reshot or, better yet, deleted. Most video indexing sucks, so few know exactly what is going on with this new method of presenting information without the hassle of real words and sentences. Stalin would have loved the medium in my opinion. Revisionism made easy.
In the video story, the Silicon Alley Insider talent races through six reasons why Google wants to buy Yelp.com. Since Google is not talking, I assumed that I would get the inside scoop on the Mountain View math club. What I heard were six reasons that a first year B school student could have cadged from a couple of hours watching CNBC. These reasons include adjacency, cultural “fit”, local content, and “killer apps on the mobile Web.”
The big reason Google wants Yelp.com is to get more money. Yep, Yelp.com traffic equals money. Amazing how the basics of B school get lost in the BS.
Stephen E. Arnold, December 20, 2009
A freebie. To which scintillating government agency do I report this depressing state of affairs. How about the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). This group should be able to relate to the reason Google wants to buy Yelp even if Silicon Valley Insider did not.
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