uk, tech, rant

So Yell decide to throw the lawyers at a little hobby site. Reminds me of BT trying to claim they had a patent on hyperlinks

Yell have a terrible website and have had years to try and sort it out. Instead of threatening legal action and spending a load of money on lawyers and bad press, what about:

• Hiring the "offending" website authors as consultants for a few days, and picking their brains


• Offering a deal, where Yell pays Yellowikis to promote their content where Yellowikis don't have much coverage


• Getting with the program and delivering a better service that customers will use in preference because it is better, not because you've beaten all the competition around the head with baseball bat


• Just making a donation to a charity of their choice (instead of the legal profession), and admitting they have missed a trick

Cause here is the thing : yellowiki is going to struggle to ever really compete with Yell, certainly within the next couple of years. They have a novel, new and still developing business model. Yell have more business connections than you could throw a stick at, exposure and money to compete.

See also Transport for London using public money to threaten a genuinely useful fan site