"it has always been our practice to transfer the domain to the restaurant as soon as they request it"
This is a form of financial blackmail. Transferring a domain usually requires paying for one year's additional registration to a new registrar and, sometimes, a transfer fee on top of that and, most times, a hosting fee to redirect it. So, to summarize simply, in story form (to make very explicit how much of a scam this is for a business owner):
<GrubHub> We've speculatively registered 50 domains at a cost of $500 to mislead people into using our order form, which at 20% commission* at $25 per order average (that we take out of what we would have paid to you) will pay itself back entirely in 100 orders placed.
<Restaurant> What?! Stop it.
<GrubHub> Hey, no sweat, we're happy to transfer those domains to you. All you need to do is initiate transfers for all of those domains, at the cost of at least $500 out of the revenue that we've been reducing by 20% for every order placed through these sites, and we'll be happy to transfer those domains to you. Also you'll have to find someone to host the redirects for you, and clean up the SEO damage we did. Best of luck with that!
<Restaurant> I don't have $500 because you've been cutting my revenue by 20%!
<GrubHub> Please rate your GrubHub Support experience by filling out a 5 minute survey.
I assume $10 per domain and GrubHub is shown to register tens of domains. Assuming a popular restaurant is worth 50 domains, they only need to capture 20% of average $25/order for qty.100 orders through 50 domains in 1 year to pay the annual registration cost of the scam.
The scam is that restaurants can’t as easily pay $500/year to prevent GrubHub from squatting on and SEOing typos of their domain, and GrubHub can simply go make up another 50 domains when the owner takes over the first 50, because they only need the 20% “marketing” ripoff from 100 orders to break even again.
You are assuming that GrubHub won't simply shut down the domains if the restaurant owner asks, as an alternative to transferring. Why do you assume that? If true that would indeed be an absurd policy, but I've seen nothing in the reporting suggesting any such thing.
Their response to the press was “we always transfer when asked”, not “we always transfer or shutdown when asked”. You may either believe the omission of “or shutdown” to be accidental or non-accidental, due to incompetence or to malice. But it’s clearly omitted whether they would or not, which is often a classical marketing technique for diverting users with a plausibly-deniable statement that doesn’t offer what’s best for others while still seeming to be respectful and kind. This is why I took apart their statement financially, to demonstrate how harmful their stated approach is to businesses. They are of course welcome to revise their statement any time.
You are assuming that GrubHub has anticipated every possible accusation against them and has intentionally crafted their response with respect to each and every one.
That's silly. No one has the ability to do that. GrubHub was responding to a very specific article which made a very specific claim that GrubHub was squatting these domains in order to lock restaurants into their platform. The most relevant response to that claim is to point out that they will transfer the domains if requested. The article in question did not make your "financial blackmail" claim, and there's no reason to expect that GrubHub would have anticipated it.
Because it is reasonable to assume that, if they would do that, their PR defense would include that. Since it does not, but does I close transfer, it is reasonable to conclude that transfer on demand is the most they will do.
Note that a proper resolution here is for some tech press reporter to formally ask them to address whether or not they’ll stop and report on what they say. Unfortunately that’s outside the scope of an HN comment discussion :(
This is a form of financial blackmail. Transferring a domain usually requires paying for one year's additional registration to a new registrar and, sometimes, a transfer fee on top of that and, most times, a hosting fee to redirect it. So, to summarize simply, in story form (to make very explicit how much of a scam this is for a business owner):
<GrubHub> We've speculatively registered 50 domains at a cost of $500 to mislead people into using our order form, which at 20% commission* at $25 per order average (that we take out of what we would have paid to you) will pay itself back entirely in 100 orders placed.
<Restaurant> What?! Stop it.
<GrubHub> Hey, no sweat, we're happy to transfer those domains to you. All you need to do is initiate transfers for all of those domains, at the cost of at least $500 out of the revenue that we've been reducing by 20% for every order placed through these sites, and we'll be happy to transfer those domains to you. Also you'll have to find someone to host the redirects for you, and clean up the SEO damage we did. Best of luck with that!
<Restaurant> I don't have $500 because you've been cutting my revenue by 20%!
<GrubHub> Please rate your GrubHub Support experience by filling out a 5 minute survey.
* "Marketing commission": https://ghlearnprod.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/...