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The business owner needs to care what their online presence (including their Google Places) looks like.

There is nothing Google or anyone else can do, if the business doesn't care.

When the business does care, there are lots of options to clean up their online presence.



Assuming that a competitor did this, then it is fair to assume that the person does not know how the "criminal mind" of someone who is after him works.

I just learned today that someone wearing Google Glass can record me typing my password on my iPad from a long distance, and be able to algorithmically figure out my password. Did I know that? No, and I am not even 74 years old.


Did you read the article? This isn't a case of the owner not caring; he didn't know that google maps was incorrectly reporting his hours. It took a phone call from a customer. And that's the problem - why would he ever think that people weren't coming to his restaurant because a map service messed up his hours? As is clear from this article, that was very low on his checklist of things that might be killing my business.


Yes, I did read the article, and my comment stands.

It is absolutely a case of the business owner not caring. It's completely understandable to not care about something that you don't know about. But if you do care about it, then you will learn about it.

As a business owner, you need to care and know how your customers find you. Be it Bing Maps, Google Maps, the phone book, etc. And you need to care that your information is correct in those places, and that means you need to know about them. Or have someone act on your behalf who can check them for you.


Yes, and more than that: he didn't know what Google Map is. He is 74 and can be excused for that. Fast forward ourselves into our 70+: how many new things we won't know or care about then?


I think everyone here is sympathetic to the idea that a 74 year-old shouldn't have to keep up with every new technology, but you seem to be forgetting the fact that he's running a business. Not knowing what Maps is is fine for a random consumer, but excusing a restaurant owner for not knowing about online map services is basically saying that he's no longer competent to run the restaurant.


...or knowing that he doesn't know about "that online stuff," and hiring someone who does know about it to help him manage it. It's a cost of business.


"The known, the unknown, and the underknown" - TMBG

"as we know, there are known knowns[...] there are known unknowns[...] But there are also unknown unknowns" - Donald Rumsfeld

It's easy for business-minded techies to understand the impact of "that online stuff". It's very likely that a septuagenarian restauranteur simply doesn't fathom its potential impact.


Agreed, and unfortunately for him, his competition WILL understand it. It's survival of the fittest. The fit septuagenarians are the ones who listen to their grand-kids who tell them they have to get "online."




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