Google licensing clash led directly to Yelp acquisition talks
Jeremy Stoppelman · Yelp: Jeremy Stoppelman · Jun 24, 2019 · at 47:28
Yelp co-founder and CEO Jeremy Stoppelman explains how Google's plans to compete with Yelp in local reviews led to acquisition talks in 2009.
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“We started by licensing our content to them in a way that we thought was reasonable, and then over time, it became clear that they really wanted to compete with us directly and collect information. Reviews themselves. And so then they said to us, well, we're going to collect reviews, but we still want your content. And we said, we're not going to compete with ourselves in your Yelp-like property that you're building. That makes no sense. So thank you very much. Like, we're done. And so that actually prompted the conversation of like, well, maybe we should acquire you after all.”
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