Google has placed one of its biggest bets on location to date, acquiring local reviews giant Zagat.
Writing on the company’s official blog, Marissa Mayer, Google‘s vice president of Local, Maps and Location Services, wrote, “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.”
Zagat is far cry from the startups you typically talk about in the location space. The company was founded 32 years ago and started as a printed guide to restaurants, with “Zagat Ratings” becoming an industry standard.
More recently, however, Zagat has reinvented itself on the web and with mobile apps, bringing it into competition with the likes of Foursquare and Yelp.
Location has been a tough nut for Google to crack. The company acquired early location-based social networking service Dodgeball in 2005, only to eventually shut it down and see founder Dennis Crowley leave to start Foursquare. More recent attempts include Latitude, a largely forgotten Foursquare competitor, and Hotpot, a recommendation engine that’s baked into Google Places. The company also appointed Mayer, one of its most prominent executives, to lead its location efforts in late 2010.
While we don’t have a price tag on the Zagat acquisition yet, it’s safe to call the buy one of Google’s biggest to date in the content business. Here’s a look at some of Google’s largest acquisitions through the years:
