Thaindian News

SAN FRANCISCO (BNO NEWS) — Internet search giant Google Inc. on Thursday announced it has acquired restaurant review guide Zagat in an effort to provide more local content in the United States. Details of the deal were not disclosed.

“Today, I’m thrilled that Google has acquired Zagat,” said Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Google’s Local, Maps and Location Services. “Moving forward, Zagat will be a cornerstone of our local offering - delighting people with their impressive array of reviews, ratings and insights, while enabling people everywhere to find extraordinary (and ordinary) experiences around the corner and around the world.”

Zagat started as a hobby in 1979 by Tim and Nina Zagat, who developed it into a popular business which collects and correlates the ratings of restaurants by diners. Their first guide, which only covered New York City, was surveyed by Zagat’s friends. It now operates in 13 categories and more than 100 cities.

“The Zagats have demonstrated their ability to innovate and to do so with tremendous insight,” Mayer said. “Their surveys may be one of the earliest forms of user-generated content - gathering restaurant recommendations from friends, computing and distributing ratings before the Internet as we know it today even existed. Their iconic pocket-sized guides with paragraphs summarizing and ’snippeting’ sentiment were ‘mobile’ before ‘mobile’ involved electronics.”

Google said Zagat ratings will be added to Google search and Google Maps, but gave no other details. Details of the deal were also not disclosed. According to Alexa.com, Zagat.com is among the 3,500 most visited websites in the United States.