Google VP Marissa Mayer announces today via the Google Blog that the Mountain View-based company has acquired Zagat, the website and book publisher of customer-generated restaurant reviews and ratings.
"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," writes Mayer. "Their iconic pocket-sized guides with paragraphs summarizing and 'snippeting' sentiment were 'mobile' before 'mobile' involved electronics. . . I'm incredibly excited to collaborate with Zagat to bring the power of Google search and Google Maps to their products and users, and to bring their innovation, trusted reputation and wealth of experience to our users."
Now, if only Google can help people learn how to pronounce the Zagat name. [Google Blog]
