This always worries me, and I never post reviews online as a result. Where I live, there are pretty severe penalties for defamation, and I'd rather not find out how it goes in court. However, it seems like Google or Yelp could bind both parties to arbitration if they want to list their business or post reviews of businesses on their website. Is there are reason they don't do that?
There's really no incentive for Google or Yelp to do this, though. Clearly plenty of people still post reviews (positive and negative), and businesses do get value out of it (though certainly all businesses are not happy with the forced relationship). So all Google and Yelp would be getting out of it is cost and headaches. It doesn't really matter to them if a business and customer get into a legal fight; the most they might have to do is follow a court order to take down a review or something, which is no big deal.
Also consider that many business don't exactly consent to be listed on Yelp or Google, and have no business relationship with Yelp or Google (many do, but not all). So there'd be nothing for the business owner to agree to, and they'd be free to sue a reviewer, regardless of whatever agreement Yelp or Google have dreamed up.
Google and Yelp do not want the hassle and administrative cost of running arbitration.
For firms that do arbitration in their EULAs or TOS, some of them have been targeted to purposefully overwhelm them with the expense of many cases going through arbitration.
I find the "economics" of reviews to be so weird - it is NOT worth it to me to review something badly, and does a good review from me really help anything?
At most a "I would shop here again" button might be something I'd press.
