Google Is Selling Off Zagat (techcrunch.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Seven years after picking up Zagat for $151 million, Google is selling off the perennial restaurant recommendation service. The New York Times is reporting this morning that the technology giant is selling off the company to The Infatuation, a review site founded nine years back by former music execs. The company had been rumored to be courting a buyer since early this year. As Reuters noted at the time, Zagat has increasingly become less of a focus for Google, as the company began growing its database of restaurant recommendations organically. Zagat, meanwhile, has lost much of the shine it had when Google purchased it nearly a decade ago. The Infatuation, which uses an in-house team of reviewers to write up restaurants in major cities like New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and London, is picking up the service for an undisclosed amount. The site clearly believes there's value left in the Zagat brand, even as the business of online reviews has changed significantly in the seven years sinceGoogle picked it up.

Comments

Yep.

[Killall -9 Bash]

Frasty Pass!!!

I remember

[nwf]

I remember buying the red Zagat booklets for various cities in order to find good restaurants while traveling. Unfortunately, Google made it almost useless. I never could find anything in their web site. The app is useless, too. I rarely found a dud with the old books, almost anything rated as excellent was. There is really nothing like it now. Yelp's reviews and ratings seem to be totally random and usually Google doesn't have enough places or enough reviews. Rating Chic-fil-a the same as some fancy steak place is not useful. One is clearly a better dining experience, but you can't really tell from the ratings. That's why Zagat rated food, ambiance and service separately. Hopefully the new overlords can make it great again.

Re:I remember

[Anonymous Coward]

Google made it almost useless

Yeah they tend to do that. DejaNews was once a great Usenet resource for the web. There were Usenet threads pre-Eternal September that were useful to keep archived. Google merged it into Groups, torched the interface several times, then made it nearly unsearchable. It's a complete mess now.

Re: I remember

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy shit. I just realized Reddit is pretty much Usenet, but with fancy pictures via html, and centrally managed.

Re:I remember

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why Zagat rated food, ambiance and service separately. Hopefully the new overlords can make it great again.

Yeah, Zagat was never a good fit for Google, because Zagat was a curated list of reviews which delved into such things. I remember thinking when they got bought that it was going to ruin Zagat.

Google et al just want as many reviews as possible so you go there first, and there's almost no way to make any meaningful decisions about the information ... OK, so 500 people rated McDonald's high, but this mom and pop place with awesome food and great service has like 3 ratings, one was by a drooling idiot who was angry they didn't have a kids menu, or take coupons, or have a fucking gluten free section.

The whiny people with their little snowflake dietary 'needs' are the worst for this -- they're constantly pissed that restaurants haven't bent over backwards for them personally, like they're the single most fucking diner on the planet.

Places like Google and Yelp have reduced the restaurant review to a snippet and an average, which conveys almost no actual useful information, and which is useless to find a good dining experience. It's all about the lowest common denominator and the most votes.

Sorry, but I don't value the star rating of a couple of hundred high school kids who are across the street from a chain restaurant, that's not what I'm looking for. But somehow that McDonald's is the second highest rated restaurant in town, which is anything but true.

The signal to noise ratio of internet review sites is abysmal, rendering them pointless.

And, as I said ... that annoying loud asshole who needs to have the entire restaurant know they're gluten intolerant, and why don't you have anything crafted specifically for them ... or the vegan in a BBQ joint who is all butt-hurt nobody gave a fuck about them when they designed the menu ... those people seem to be prevalent in way too many reviews, further making them useless. Not every restaurant had you in mind when they opened, you're not their target demographic princess -- and you could probably tell that from the outside. Bubba's House O' Grilled Meat doesn't care about vegans, so spare us your review and bullshit about how there was nothing on the menu for you. You knew that before you walked in the door.

And your fellow diners? We don't give a fuck either, so shut up about it. We are here to have a good example of the stuff you refuse to eat, so sit down and shut up and order the salad or go someplace else.

Google restaurant reviews pretty much convey no intelligent information.

It's nice to occasionally see the menu online, but actually putting any value in the reviews or the rating? Not going to be of anything of value there for the most part -- no restaurant review by a high school kid with an app is worth a fucking thing to me, nor is the quality of the fucking kids menu; but those are counted with equal weight.

At least with Zagat you could know it was adults, who could afford a sit down dinner, and weren't there to advance their personal agenda. With online reviews, you should assume none of those things.

Re:I remember

[nwf]

At least with Zagat you could know it was adults, who could afford a sit down dinner, and weren't there to advance their personal agenda. With online reviews, you should assume none of those things.

I agree, but that may also have been due to the time when it started. The Internet wasn't really as widely used by the idiot activists. By forcing people to pay actual money for the reviews, you really did cut down on the morons. Perhaps they can bring that back. I'd still pay for good reviews.

People around where I live apparently have no taste. Most of the highly rated places are like 80 years old and serving food from cans, yet are rated 4.5 stars. I've been eating out enough that I can often read the menu and have a good guess as to the quality, but I think some places are onto that and have their menus professionally written and then the food is nothing like what's described.

Re:another squandered brand

[Anonymous Coward]

Because you're a millennial. You probably don't know Michelin guides, either.

Re:another squandered brand

[sexconker]

Sears Roebuck, Builder's Emporium, Circuit City, Comp USA, Radio Shack, ...

Are we just listing failures now?

Re:Zagat?

[DontBeAMoran]

Or maybe he doesn't live in the USA? I've never heard of Zagat either.

Re:another squandered brand

[TJ_Phazerhacki]

I use Zagat still, because it reliably ensures reasonable to excellent service while not pandering to the cutting-edge food trends that mean 90-minute waits for a noodle bowl while people trying to be trendy crowd a bar with shitty drinks designed to appeal to their garbage palate. FWIW, I'm in my early 30's, so I'm well aware it's my 'peers' ruining things for everyone...