Location-based addition
Search giant Google has announced it's acquiring croudsourced restaurant and tourism guide Zagat. The move is an investment in Google's local offering, specifically as accessed by many people from Google Maps.
"I'm thrilled that Google has acquired Zagat," blogged Google location services VP Marissa Mayer. "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."
"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. Today, Zagat provides people with a democratized, authentic and comprehensive view of where to eat, drink, stay, shop and play worldwide based on millions of reviews and ratings."
Location-based services are destined to be a high-growth market thanks to the mobile Internet boom, and this move is clearly designed to bolster Google's position. Google Maps is already a key differentiator for Android devices, and full reviews will further enhance that proposition, as well as giving Google another potential revenue stream.
Google Maps is already ahead of the game when it comes to local content, if a recent business trip was any indicator. Compared with Bing Maps it was both easier to search and provided more information about local restaurants, etc, so Microsoft has a bit of catching up to do there. Maybe they'll buy one of the other third-party LBS providers, such as Telmap.
