Welcome to day 3 of Gizmodo’s March Madness bracket challenge to name the greatest app of all time! WhatsApp barely beat out Dark Sky in our second round of the tournament, garnering 53 percent of the overall vote. RIP Dark Sky. And today we have an epic grudge match between Google Maps and Yelp.
If you’re just tuning in, you can read all about our selection criteria for this historic contest right here. And always, if you think we missed your personal favorite app of all time, yell at us in the comments. Now, let’s get into today’s contestants.
With over 1 billion monthly active users, our first contestant is the undisputed king of the maps apps. Launched in 2005, Google Maps is one of the oldest candidates in the competition but has shown no signs of slowing down in its advanced age. If there is a mobile app that can be said to have made the world a better place, it’s hard to argue with this one. The days of printing out MapQuest directions officially ended when this bad boy hit the scene. And even Apple hasn’t been able to catch up.
With somewhere around 100 million monthly users, Yelp is the decided underdog in this contest but what it lacks in size it makes up for in determination. For at least 13 years, the online review hub has been throwing tiny daggers at Google and prompting governments to engage in antitrust action against the search giant.
The Rotten Tomatoes of restaurant reviews taught us all how to take advice from the most annoying Karens in the world and gave people a way to harass businesses over the tiniest slight from halfway around the world. But at its best, Yelp could help an upstart small business rise to the top of the ranks by simply focusing on quality and letting the feedback roll in.
So what’ll it be readers? Will you vote for the maps of one of the world’s most hardcore monopolists or will you leave Yelp a five-star review with no comment?
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