This is flat out incorrect. Restaurants can simply ask for the domain to be transferred over. Grubhub was “caught” selling something that merchants sign up for. The suite of products can be complicated, so it’s understandable that people can be confused (the burden is on Grubhub to make things clearer, for sure). But this is not the nefarious act you’re framing it to be.
It’s because what you are saying is factually incorrect. What actually happened is that they set them up and promoted them unrequested. You had to know this was happening and file an opt-out request to get them to stop, which is why they changed their policy later. Similarly, the fake phone numbers were setup without the restaurants’ knowledge until it got attention and laws passed banning the practice.
> "Grubhub has never cybersquatted, which is identified by ICANN as 'generally bad faith registration of another person’s trademark in a domain name,'" the company said in a statement. "As a service to our restaurants, we have created microsites for them as another source of orders and to increase their online brand presence. Additionally, we have registered domains on their behalf, consistent with our restaurant contracts. We no longer provide that service and it has always been our practice to transfer the domain to the restaurant as soon as they request it."
Totally agreed that Grubhub could've clarified this better. SMB Sales is hard, and it's not easy to communicate every aspect of a contract to every single merchant.
That’s the PR spin. If you read it more carefully, notice that they did this without requests from the restaurant, which is why all of those articles include owners who were surprised by the practice. They claim that their TOS allows it and that’s why it’s not classic cybersquatting but if all they’d been doing was on-demand microsites they wouldn’t have stopped as soon as it got attention.
Again, totally agreed that Grubhub should've made microsites more obvious to merchants during the sales cycle. But it's not PR spin - to a merchant with 0 online presence (more than you'd think), the value is demonstrable.
No company lines out every single little thing they do during a sale because the whole point of using a company like Grubhub is "we'll take care of this eCommerce thing for you." I'm with you in that they should've been more explicit about microsites given that more and more owners have to be aware of their online presence. I believe it's an understandable mistake given Grubhub's size, and that the amount of feedback around microsites was likely really low (or else they would've gotten ahead of it).
I also understand your skepticism given that Grubhub hasn't done a great job of handling the narrative around these things.
This isn't a narrative, "sales is hard", or PR problem.
It's a surprising, unasked-for, and disagreeable experience for a restaurant owner.
If they ask for a microsite when it is offered, sell it to them. If they don't, don't.
Hiding behind "No company lines out every single little thing they do during a sale" or "getting people to understand contracts is hard" is bullshit.
This isn't a harmless EULA. Contracts with an asterisk'ed "(oh and by the way we'll do a bunch of other shit on your behalf), sorry, there's a lot of stuff, trust us, just sign here" are the ethical equivalent of a fake "Download" button. Take the time to get your prospects to understand what you're offering. If taking the time loses you sales, take a long hard look at what you're selling or the prospects you've chosen. If the people making the sales can't be counted on to take the time, get salespeople with more integrity.
Hiding behind "[we did it without telling them because] the value is demonstrable" is, similarly, bullshit. Demonstrate the value. Your customers may agree with your demonstration and choose to purchase a feature, or not. This is called sales.
Claiming this is an "understandable mistake given Grubhub's size" is, you guessed it, bullshit. That translates to "Google/other big companies routinely abuse their customers without consequence, so it's OK that GrubHub does too!" Getting away with something is not the same as acting ethically.
You're all over this thread defending this practice as a sales misstep or a messaging failure. It's neither of those things. It's an instance of the distressingly common habit of software companies to knowingly act unethically towards their customers--usually for the clicks/traffic/sale, and rarely when they misguidedly think they're doing the right thing--because they know they can probably get away with it, and, when called out, brush it under the rug as a "misunderstanding".
GrubHub had three choices: behave ethically, without glossing over what was going to be sold (this would have been harder and may have resulted in slower growth); behave knowingly unethically; not build/sell the thing at all. They chose the second.
