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Comment by dontreact | Hacker News Reader

Funny how there is pushback on the YCombinator forum to an attempt to hold accountable a YCombinator company that actually has a direct hand in doing this to restaurants.

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.

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> How would Google know which postings are fraudulent and which aren't?

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."

Probably not a good idea for Google to go after other companies in this way given all the antitrust specter.

NYTimes headline

“Google abusing monopoly position to muscle out delivery startups”

https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented#percei...

"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.

Trivial. DoorDash has been caught doing this. Add this to TOS. If DoorDash persists, remove them from all searches until they prove they have fixed the issue and pay a penalty for bad behavior.

> How would Google know which postings are fraudulent and which aren't?

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 behalf

I thought it was Grubhub/Doordash actually taking the orders, Google is just providing a link to their service.

Google has a big blue button that says "make an order". Sounds like they're taking orders to me.

Honestly, if Doordash is a known bad actor (and it is), Google just just blacklist all results from them. That will hurt Doordash far more than it hurts Google or consumers.

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