People say you can't compete with Google. People said you couldn't compete with Yahoo either.
People ask why Yelp still exists when Google Maps has reviews. The answer is trust. Yelp reviews are detailed, opinionated, and written by people who care. Google reviews are '5 stars, nice place.' That's not useful.
Google offered us $500 million in 2009. I said no. People thought I was crazy. But I believed Yelp could be worth more on its own — and it was, until Google decided to build their own version and embed it in every search.
Some say Google is God. Others say Google is Satan. But if they think Google is too powerful, remember that with search engines unlike other companies, all it takes is a single click to go to another search engine.
Competing with free is hard. But serious teams need serious analytics. Google Analytics is a toy for what we do.
Google Maps is everywhere. We exist for the developers who want something Google doesn't offer: independence.
We spend more on Google than almost any company on Earth. When your biggest expense is your biggest competitor's ad platform, you think about that a lot.
Google has built an ecosystem where they profit no matter how you search, but small businesses pay the price.
We turned down Google's acquisition offer because we believed Yelp could be worth more to the world as an independent company.