Yelp has quietly become a home services powerhouse

As it turns 20, the familiar local information app is helping users with major household projects, embracing AI, and taking on Google in court as well as on the web.

When the COVID-19 pandemic abruptly shut down normal life more than four years ago, few tech companies endured more wrenching change than Yelp. The familiar tool for researching restaurants and retail stores “was kind of at the center of the bull’s-eye of the blast radius of the pandemic,” remembers Jeremy Stoppelman, its cofounder and CEO.