Take away the delivery companies’ bad practices, you take away the Google experience the restaurants don’t like.
I think it makes the most sense to hold Google responsible here since they are in the best position to solve the problem and they're not showing any inclination to do so.
How would Google know which postings are fraudulent and which aren't? The vast majority of these postings are fine/legitimate/consented. Why does it have to be Google that spends time and energy going after the bad actors, and if they don't, they become one?
In other words, I really don't see how Google is in the best position to figure out which restaurants have been posted without the restaurant's consent. I think that would be the companies putting up the original post.
Oh, that's the best part. Google doesn't have to. DoorDash and GrubHub know. So Google can offer to derank all their listings and offerings or they can police them themselves.
"In two weeks, Google will be taking action against companies that regularly interject their own phone numbers in place of actual brick-and-mortar locations in an attempt to use SEO to siphon off sales. We look forward to our partners policing their listings to ensure all colistings are voluntary."
NYTimes headline
“Google abusing monopoly position to muscle out delivery startups”
"Additionally, founders of YC companies see each other's usernames show up in orange, which — although not an explicit benefit — does allow fellow YC founders to immediately identify one another in discussions."
There it is, in a nutshell, how company owners are able to brigade as a collective group.
There's a very very simple algorithm for this.
Do I have a direct business relationship with this company?
|
|-> Yes -> take orders on their behalf
|-> No -> Do not take orders on their behalfI don't know the specifics, though -- maybe the proposed project was much much worse and this is what the engineers were able to negotiate. But I kinda doubt it.
When DoorDash can place a link to their service on the Google result for a restaurant, it looks like it is a legitimate part of the restaurant's service. When they do this in a deceptive manner (without the restaurant's permission), it harms both customer and restaurant, because prices are often higher, there are extra service fees, and Doordash takes a big cut of the sale. And in the case of pickup orders, they get this big cut of the profit without adding a single bit of value to the transaction. And the customer may never even know who they were dealing with.
Google could temporarily delist those sites and instantly get them to stop.