Google greedily goobles foodie guide Zagat

Google has acquired Zagat, the US restaurant guide, to tag onto its search engine and mapping application. The purchase price is undisclosed.

Google confirmed the deal in a blog entry, penned by Marissa Mayer, who currentlu heads up Local, Maps and Location Services

"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.

"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," Mayer wrote.

Founded in 1979 by Tim and Nina Zagat, the guide houses reviews of restaurants in more than 100 countries from 350,000 foodies. The Zagat Survey provides reviews in print and online and on "virtually every mobile platform, the founders claim. The business reportedly put itself up for sale in 2008.

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