Rumors about Google intending to buy Yelp broke out on the Web. It doesn't really come as a surprise, and it's even coming quite late in Google's game. Google is interested in consumer reviews because Google is now catering online services to small businesses.
It all started on September 24th, when Google announced Place Pages for businesses. Right off the bat, Yelp was identified as the potential loser in this adequation. This wasn't entirely true because Yelp had quality reviews from millions of dedicated users. Google didn't have that. However, Google announced that Place Pages were only designed to appear in Google Maps, which was not true: Those pages were indexed and findable on the Web.
All of a sudden, Google became a competitor to sites like Yelp. Yelp reinforced its communications with small businesses to make sure business owners keep considerign Yelp as their premier place for handling consumer reviews and ratings.
To start fighting on Yelp's ground, Google had to figure out a way to measure the popularity of businesses too. Enters PlaceRank, the algorithm used by Google to determine the popularity of places. PlaceRank is defined by a businesses' PageRank, user-generated info, and trusted sources, among other things.
Since an algorithm is not enough, Google officially announced the release of the 'what people are saying about' feature on Place Pages. Google is shamelessly scraping consumer ratings from its trusted sources (maybe it is a partnership, I don't know) to power its own pages:
How many small consumer-rating Websites will die from this? Whatever they do, Google will simply use their user-generated info to power its own Place Pages. So whether you believe that your brand is strong enough to keep visitors coming to your site (like Zagat probably), or you really want to plan an exit before it becomes too obvious that Google just stole the Web and is serving hyperlocal info to Audi A8 drivers with it.
As an outro, here is a brief quote from Lawrence Coburn's rants on Google Place Pages:
The question is not, "What does Google's move towards being a destination mean for Yelp?" The question is, "What does this mean for the Web?"
Google has become a dominant company by being the most powerful online middleman in history, sitting between the searcher and the destination website. It appears that they may be starting to wonder what would happen if they became the destination.
In French: Yelp! Google Rachete Le Web!
