I feel like this is an unfair analogy. AirBnb and Yelp charge reasonable prices and take a mostly reasonable cut, if any at all. The publishing houses are charging enormous amounts, far beyond the value they add. Or so the argument goes.
Sure, I think we both agree that the price is not proportional to the service as I already stated. The grantparent post (and other posts here) was asking in a way that implied they weren't doing more than hosting pdfs. I was just pointing out that many of our lauded startups basically are just nothing more than network effect and content hosting as well. And in fact, if they could get away with charging Elsevier-like prices, they would immediately do so and be celebrated for it.
> our lauded startups basically are just nothing more than network effect and content hosting as well
I think it would be more accurate to call them "controversial", at best, rather than "lauded" or "celebrated", even here on HN.
To be fair, though, I don't think the controversy has tended to stem from them not providing/creating value and merely being rent-seekers. Rather, it's tended to be more regulatory issues (especially with AirBnB and the "gig economy"). Yelp may be the most notable exception, as it's in hot water for alleged extortion, which is easily rent-seeking, its content is user-generated, and it depends on popularity, if not the network effect.
That said, with all those startups, it's relatively easy to point to what they actually do that's of non-trivial value to their users and/or customers. With Elsevier, that's hard to identify, presumably because it simply doesn't exist.
EDIT: "Infrastructure and procedures to publish" is extremely thin, IMO. Procedures are just a one-off document, and something the authors and the volunteers that they outsource to do, not the "publisher". As for infrastructure, I'm willing to believe it, but, so far, all I've heard is that they just take papers and send them back out, without providing anything like publishing tools.
How much do you think it should be? I personally believe if elsevier et al only profited 25% from publishing, prices would be much lower than they are now.
How much it should cost to put an entry in to database? It shouldn't be 30% of your revenue! The whole business model here is to gain customer eyeballs and once you get momentum, you do outright theft in to fruits of other people's labor.
Imagine amount of work done by a single AirBnB host to maintain his/her property, taking bunch of risks and trying to make whole transaction successful. In what world AirBnB is eligible to get 30% of that labor for merely allowing to insert a database entry in to their system? This whole trend was popularized by Steve Jobs where Apple is somehow eligible to get 30% cut for mere privileged of publishing app on their platform. Much of the reviews they do is automated and tiny amount of labor involved is often housed in India (just like Elsewiser). For adding an entry in to database, there should be fixed price and businesses shouldn't be stealing 30% from other people's work.
