Google has allied itself with Australian SMBs through a partnership with Intuit, and with Indian eWallet carriers through its new payment app Tez. However, the search engine’s continued “scraping” angers Yelp, and the company implicitly positions itself against Uber by investing in competitor Lyft. Plus: Pixel 2, Bitcoin, and malware (again) — all in this week’s Google tracker.  Read More...

Burger bots: faster, cheaper and more consistent than humans, but has the industry really thought through the consequences of automating all those jobs? Change is likely inevitable, but just for fun, we’ve gathered some of the pros and cons of automation in the kitchen, particularly burger bots like Flippy (Miso Robotics) and a similar automaton by Momentum Machines. Plus, has anybody thought about the long, long game? This guy has, and his vision is, well, “utopian.”  Read More...

Yelp's Push To Build Relevant, Rewarding Commerce

Yelp holds something of a unique status among the many commerce portals consumers visit each day. After all, the platform caters to people who are on the hunt to buy something they will likely use in the next week, if not the very same day. Yelp’s made that process more rewarding by piloting cash back offers to registered consumer cards on file for use at the 100,000 merchants for whom they process transactions. It's all part of what David McKie, director of Yelp’s business development, told Karen Webster is the firm's overall vision: to help merchants understand what drives customers — and then giving them the tools to take action.  Read More...