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Doesn't Yelp have a reputation for much shadier business practices (i.e. extortion)? Maybe they're not a very sympathetic underdog in this fight.

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Yea perhaps - I'm not really defending Yelp as much as I'm worried about Google. I think this extends beyond just Yelp into the wider market (hotels.com, tripadvisor, paid search results, etc).

Yelp is definitely not a sympathetic party, but that doesn't invalidate or weaken their claim. Particularly if, as they claim, Google is specifically violating an agreement with the FTC.

Yelp is indeed sht company and needs to be investigated for its own shakedown techniques. But this doesn't mean that Google isn't behaving in an anti-competitive way.

Side note, Yelp literally called my partner who ran PR for non profits art org and asked to be paid $$ or else competitors ads would run on their page. Literal words. One would pay for NOTHING except not having competitors getting promoted on your own pages.

Partner laughed and hung up.

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