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Comment by Barbing | Hacker News Reader

Can’t believe nobody has figured out how to monetize honest in-depth reviews of everything (restaurants, electronics, etc.)

Think of the billions wasted on inferior/sub-par/non-leading products and experiences, and the happiness opportunity cost.

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I think it's a scale issue. A small group or individual can build up a trusted source of reviews, but the brand is worth a lot compared to people who are selling things, compared to the direct revenue from people who are buying.

So the incentive to sell is way more than people will pay for the reviews.

Combine that with a timing problem, a review at one year is pointless to new car buyers, since the new model is a bit different.

I worked at a company that tried that 15 years ago. The problem is that the incentives for such businesses is perverse. It’s basically impossible to avoid people trashing a competitor’s product to promote their own, paid reviews, taking fees from manufacturers for making good reviews more visible for them (gotta pay the bills), all sorts of things that eventually makes your business unreliable just like all others.

There's the Michelin star thing, not sure if / how they monetize it but it's not making them any poorer. And there's some consumer organizations like (in the Netherlands) the Consumentenbond which has subscribers, but it's a bit more like a union than a review company.

Michelin makes tires, they originally made the star system to get people to drive to these places, thereby using up their tires.

Choice does a pretty good job, and is pretty in-depth.

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