Google To Add Restaurant Wait Times To Google Search, Maps (techcrunch.com)

Google Search and Maps already show you the peak traffic times for your favorite restaurants, but it will soon show you the wait times as well. Google says the feature begins rolling out today, and will eventually expand to include grocery stores. TechCrunch reports: Google's new restaurant wait times also comes from the aggregated and anonymized data from users who opted in to Google Location History -- the same data that powers popular times, wait times and visit duration. In the case of restaurants, Google will now include a pop-up box that appears when you click on a time frame in the popular times' chart. The box shows the live or historical data labeled as "busy," "usually busy," "usually not busy," etc., along with the wait time. Below the popular times chart, there's also a section that helps users plan their visit by offering info on the peak wait times and duration. (e.g. "People typically spend 45 mins to 2 hr here.") The new wait time feature will be supported on nearly a million sit-down restaurant listings worldwide, initially in Google Search.

Comments

Queuing for food is for fools

[ickleberry]

I doubt Eric Schmidt stands in a queue waiting for a table to become available and it's a bit of an insult to think he expects other people to do that. If a place is so busy you have to queue, good chance there is a deserted place just down the road waiting to dole out a nice meal. Or if there isn't simply go home and cook your own food just like in the good old days. Save a pile of money too

Restaurant-queuing seems to be a cultural phenomenon associated mostly with America. It's not unusual to see a mile-long queue for a restaurant in America but in other parts of the world if there's a few waiting by the door people deem it to be busy and quickly move on to the next place.