Google is selling US restaurant review guide Zagat, which it bought for $151M in 2011, to restaurant review company The Infatuation for an undisclosed sum
The guidebook was once a go-to source for restaurant recommendations Greg Sterling / Search Engine Land : Google selling Zagat to restaurant recommendations site The Infatuation Adnan Farooqui / Ubergizmo : Google Sells Zagat For An Undisclosed Amount Jon Fingas / Engadget : Google sells restaurant review service Zagat Stefanie Tuder / Eater NY : Two of NYC's Biggest Restaurant Review Sites Just Combined Abner Li / 9to5Google : Google is selling restaurant review service Zagat to The Infatuation Evan Selleck / Android and Me : Google is selling Zagat to restaurant review site The Infatuation Chris Burns / SlashGear : Google sold Zagat, but it'll probably be OK Brian Heater / TechCrunch : Google is selling off Zagat Brandy Betz / Seeking Alpha : NYT: Google selling Zagat Tweets: @nytimesbusiness : Ownership of Zagat will change again — into the hands of an upstart restaurant review company that has harnessed smartphone apps, an Instagram hashtag and a texting recommendation service as parts of its path to growth. http://www.nytimes.com/... @kottke : Google is selling Zagat to The Infatuation seven years after buying it for $151 million http://www.nytimes.com/... Chris Crowley / @chrisecrowley : “bros say” the triple cheeseburger is “bomb” but they're “stoked” to “dip in again” for the “chicken sando” http://www.nytimes.com/... Lewis C. Lin / @lewis_lin : Google has had several remarkable acquisitions in the past: YouTube, Urchin, Applied Semantics and Urchin. Zagat joins Nest as one of the more problematic acquisitions in the last 5 years. http://twitter.com/... Chris Messina / @chrismessina : I was there when @Google bought @Zagat to bolster its play against Yelp.It's like Google bought a plump grape, sucked out its data guts and is now tossing the leftover brand raisin turd to the @infatuation.V curious to hear @profgalloway's take.http://www.nytimes.com/ ... Andrew Steinthal / @schmooey : When you acquire the company that inspired your own. Google to Sell Zagat to The Infatuation, an Upstart Review Site http://www.nytimes.com/... Kara Swisher / @karaswisher : Old Marissa Mayer deal when Google bought it: Google to Sell Zagat to The Infatuation, an Upstart Review Site via @NYTimes http://www.nytimes.com/... See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
Google paid $151M for Zagat in 2011 at the height of its push to own local-review content, then spent seven years letting the brand fade inside Maps and Search. After a January report that it was exploring a sale, the offload to The Infatuation closes the chapter on one of the last big-name acquisitions of the early local-data land grab.
The buyer matters more than the price: The Infatuation is a young, editorially driven NYC review site absorbing a legacy guidebook name, and Eater framed it as two of the city's biggest restaurant review operations combining under one roof.
First-order effects
- Google exits the standalone restaurant-guide business entirely, keeping whatever local data it needs for Maps while handing the Zagat brand and archive to a much smaller operator.
- The Infatuation instantly becomes steward of a national legacy brand on an undisclosed budget, forcing it to decide how much of Zagat's print-era identity survives alongside its own hashtag-driven review model.
Second-order effects
- Running two review brands requires capital beyond a scrappy publisher's cash flow — which is exactly what followed, when The Infatuation raised $30M from Jeffrey Katzenberg's WndrCo six months later.
- Specialist restaurant-discovery players elsewhere are scaling on their own terms — India's Zomato raised $50M at a $1B+ valuation and bought point-of-sale software — so Google's retreat leaves more room for focused regional platforms rather than a big-tech monopoly on dining recommendations.
Third-order effects
- The pattern points toward big tech systematically pruning niche content properties it overpaid for during the 2010s local land grab, with focused operators consolidating the brands — a path that ended with JPMorgan Chase buying The Infatuation outright in 2021, showing restaurant-discovery assets ultimately migrating from tech giants to consumer-facing financial platforms.
- If review content keeps consolidating outside the giants, the durable value sits not in owning the guidebook but in controlling where diners transact — the same logic behind GrubHub's $80M move into delivery by acquiring DiningIn and Restaurants on the Run.
The trend: Big tech is unwinding the niche content acquisitions of its local-data era, selling review brands to focused operators who consolidate them until larger consumer platforms come calling.