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Comment by josefx | Hacker News Reader

> The problem is the ordering platforms enabling this integration without restaurant consent.

The lawsuit seems to focus on the history of how that happened a bit. Namely Google seems to have initially tried to sell this API to restaurants directly. Hence the brazen trademark infringement and restaurant impersonation, it was intended to operate with the authorization of the restaurants directly. Only when that failed did they move on to third party distributors that didn't have any right to the trademarks, without changing the now deceptive interface.

> I don't think Google even takes a cut!

The lawsuit is a bit unclear on that (through information and belief) but also cites alternative revenue streams through ads and pushing more people onto its own payment platform.

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> Namely Google seems to have initially tried to sell this API to restaurants directly.

...which was a fools errand. It is impossible to expect individual restaurants (_maybe_ aside from large restaurant groups - ie, big chains) to integrate with this API.

To me it seems much more likely that Google pivoted to working directly with delivery operators for practical reasons to make the product functional.

I would also bet that contracts with the delivery operators include a bit about how they will enable this integration and what that means. Perhaps they do not make it explicit enough in the sales cycle (or, didn't in the case of Lime)

Google doesn’t take a cut yet.

Bingo. Cripple the competition now, then turn on the money spigot whenever they want.

Or wait until you gain critical mass, and then pull the plug on the entire project since it's not making money. It is the Googs after all.

Good take. This made me thing of all the GOogle failures in a different light. It isn't just that they abandon users. They also crush competitors in the initial phase (by being free, or generally having Google branding), only to pull the plug. We often talk about the users left with having to find an alternative, but not the competitors they crushed along the way.

In ads and commerce, Google has much longer time horizon... e.g. froogle was launched in 2002 and they rebranded and "turned on the spigot" in 2012.

Google wouldn't do that because ... well ... because don't be evil

Or discontinue the feature completely when the director in charge of the project gets bored with it

Not sure how that happens unless they decide to launch their own DoorDash clone.

Froogle 2.0? Let them signup and invest integration efforts to get an intial free spigot of traffic, then yank the rug and start charging on a per unit basis once it reaches critical mass.

It is completely irrelevant if Google takes a cut or not. Google uses the restaurant's brand name to enable one of their delivery partners to undercut the restaurant's own delivery system.

The nature of the partnership between Google and the delivery firm is not directly relevant to the restaurant's loss of revenue. They could be building a future business, they could be compensated in an indirect fashion (ex. those who pay more to AdSense get a preferential treatment) etc.

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