I really like Yelp and I think it's a great service, but I don't contribute because of the complete lack of data portability. Even their RSS feeds are heavily truncated. I'd contribute significantly if this changed. For instance, automatically posting my Yelp reviews to my blog would be a big incentive.
well, they have almost 22B dollars sitting in cash. from an investor's point of view, that is wasteful. Easy way to turn that cash into growing revenue streams is to purchase profitable companies. Though 500 mil is a bit steep to pay for yelp IMHO.
This seems like a good marriage to me (or is it an adoption?). More and more on google, I see adsense results that are local in nature, and with more focus on android, this is a perfect addition to get more ad real estate that is location based.<p>I use a lot of iphone apps, but more often than not, when I have my wallet out, I use the Yelp app to purchase food or drink. As a user, I'd be much more reluctant to utilize an admob ad on an unrelated iphone app or game as opposed to clicking on an ad when I'm trying to find a good thai restaurant somewhere in the midwest.
This would actually perfectly compliment the new PlaceRank effort in which Google is sending out all of those QR stickers - Think foursquare for check in + Yelp userbase/content + locally targeted adwords, and throw in AdMob.<p>About the stickers: <a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/16/check-in-google-foursquare-loopt/" rel="nofollow">http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/16/check-in-google-foursqu...</a>
you'll never, ever, ever hear me say this ever again: <i>i thought scoble made some interesting points</i> (when he talked about facebook acquiring yelp). <a href="http://scobleizer.com/2009/03/26/facebook-is-lucky-it-missed-buying-twitter-and-now-should-eat-yelp/" rel="nofollow">http://scobleizer.com/2009/03/26/facebook-is-lucky-it-missed...</a><p>but what does google have to gain? extend google maps/local? aren't they already scraping reviews and ratings? screw the "don't be evil," what's in it for them...especially at $500M?<p>and as a random peanut gallery jab, it kills me how "past the term sheet stage" indicates an 80% probability. isn't anything past .01% "past the term sheet stage?"
To max out profit Google may as well own the top 10 listings they display under major search terms (Knol) and long-tail local search (Yelp).<p>That should cover 50% of profitable searches yes?<p>Toddling monopoly?