Yelp: the Business of Extortion
Starting, maintaining, and growing a business is no easy task. It is even more difficult when you face a bully which happens to be a much larger, better-known business threatening you to use their service or face destruction for refusing them. Nonetheless, this has been the case for many businesses, from very large corporations to tiny businesses struggling to make rent month to month to every type of business in between. This is because of an online company utilizing a rating system of individual user reviews to leverage businesses, ultimately, to believe they require its services or they will suffer. The company responsible for this behavior and for the subsequent difficulties of many businesses as a result? Yelp, a name with which anyone who has searched for a business on the Internet or knows anything about online reviewing is familiar. Many have found its services helpful since its founding in 2004, and it does seem like a good thing. When a business model like Yelp’s becomes abusive and resorts to bullying to make money from businesses who need to have a positive presence online, though, things can go very bad quickly. This is, in fact, exactly what has happened in the fifteen years Yelp has been operating online. Read more »
