When Yelp first took off, our rankings on Google would fluctuate wildly.

Where folks like Google have fallen down is in just putting a little review box up, then closing their eyes and letting the algorithm take care of itself. Yelp is a technology company, but also a company that understands how people want to connect with one another.

In the very beginning, Yelp started as a service where we really didn't think people would write reviews for fun. The whole concept of user-generated content was pretty nascent in 2004.

There is this cat and mouse game that plays out over time where our team comes up with new and interesting ideas to identify content that we shouldn't recommend, and over time people are constantly probing that, trying to figure out how can they get around that and get a better reputation on Yelp.

As a kid, I harbored this fantasy of starting a company. I looked at the entrepreneur column in Forbes. I looked at it every month and thought, 'I want to be that guy.'

Consumers are empowered by Yelp and tools like it: before, when they had a bad experience, they didn't have much recourse. They could fume, but often nothing else other than tell their friends.