Google Buys Zagat Guide

They promise to make it central to their local and map products
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 8, 2011 12:01 PM CDT
Google Buys Zagat Guide
The 2008 Zagat, New York's leading food guide, is on display for its first day on sale at a book store in New York, 10 October 2007.   (Getty Images)

We’re going to bet that Yelp is pretty upset right now, because Google took what looks to be a big step into its turf today by acquiring Zagat to bolster its location offerings, Mashable reports. Marissa Mayer, Google’s VP of Local, Maps, and Location services, announced the deal in haiku form on Twitter, writing, “Delightful deal done; Zagat and Google now one; foodies have more fun!”

On the company blog, Mayer was just as enthusiastic (if less poetic). “Moving forward, Zagat will be a cornerstone of our local offering,” she wrote. “Their surveys may be one of the earliest forms of UGC (user-generated content)—gathering restaurant recommendations from friends, computing and distributing ratings before the Internet as we know it today even existed.” (More Zagats stories.)

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