Google Acquires Zagat Survey

Google, the owner of the search engine with most users in the world, has acquired Zagat Survey. Google did not offer details about the price of acquisition.

ZAGAT Survey was founded in 1979 when husband-and-wife co-chairs Tim and Nina Zagat invited avid diners to rate and review the restaurants they visited. ZAGAT provides reviews and ratings of restaurants, hotels, shopping and other leisure activities based on the surveys on a large number of consumers. It separately rates the distinct qualities of a restaurant, hotel, etc. The ratings and reviews are available in books, online and on mobile devices.

According to Tim and Nina, this move will enable their employees, their users and their business to benefit from the additional resources and reach that Google provides. They believe that the combination of Zagat’s and Google’s assets and capabilities will maximize their product quality and growth.

This acquisition will help Google be more attractive to users and advertisers. Google has already offered services such as Places, which makes local businesses call attention to themselves in search results.

Google might also want to take advantage of the ZAGAT ratings to improve the products of Google Offers, which is the group-buying service Google launched after the company failed to acquire Groupon. With ZAGAT, Google is able to compete with Yelp, the social networking, user review, and local search web site with more than 54 million monthly unique visitors.