AI for all

Tech companies from DoorDash to Yelp are hyping new AI-driven features.

Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman during a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting about Google’s alleged anticompetitive behavior… 13 years ago. Photo credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman seems happy. This year, his longtime nemesis, Google, was declared an illegal monopoly by a federal judge. About a month later, Yelp sued Google claiming the search giant limits consumer choice and prioritizes its own local search products. This makes it increasingly hard for companies like Yelp to compete, the company said.

“Our case is about Google, the largest information gatekeeper in existence, putting its heavy thumb on the scale to stifle competition and keep consumers within its own walled garden,” he wrote in a company blog post.

It was hard, as I wrote at the time, not to read straight through these words to Stoppelman’s glee. But a Google defeat is only part of the opportunity he sees for Yelp. The other part, as he explained during the company’s third quarter earnings call in November, is new AI-driven entrants into the search business that are poised to challenge Google as the dominant internet search provider in the future.