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Comment by jpeg_hero | Hacker News Reader

I guess not illegal, but super shady.

Pretty easy to see how incremental thinking leads to a shady result. We get paid $X per order from our restaurant clients, they like more orders so if we can get them more, they’ll be happier and pay us more -> improve SEO of Grubhub<dot>com -> works -> what else can we do -> use our seo skills -> register other websites do seo -> more orders.

Bad result, but know how they got there.

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Are there no trademark issues from using the restaurant's official logos? These restaurants may not have filed on everything they should have and probably don't have the resources to fight it regardless, but what if they did? A large company would definitely send a C&D immediately for actions like this.

The Grubhub terms of service almost certainly include a license to use the name and any trademarks for purposes including these shadow sites.

And it will almost certainly land them in a huge class action lawsuit. The SEO damage done to small businesses makes them almost reliant upon GrubHub after making the mistake of doing business with them in the first place. Terms of Service can say whatever it wants it's not an official legal document, just something they turn to when their ethics violations get exposed.

It’s also now harder for the restaurants to leave? They may get lazy with advertising more generally and then would lose a lot if GH shut down the sites as a result?

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