Google sells Zagat to restaurant discovery platform The Infatuation

Google has sold Zagat to restaurant discovery platform The Infatuation. — AFP Relaxnews

Google has sold off crowd-sourced restaurant guide Zagat seven years after buying it to much fanfare.

Google has offloaded the beleaguered burgundy guide and sold it to The Infatuation, which calls itself a restaurant discovery platform written by a small group of "highly trained, highly opinionated writers and editors" who dine anonymously.

In a press release, The Infatuation co-founder and CEO Chris Stang said that the two brands will exist independently, with individual platforms, distinct purposes and points of view.

While The Infatuation will maintain its editorial approach to restaurant reviews, Zagat will expand with a new tech-driven platform for its crowd-sourced reviews, he explained.

"Tim and I are very excited for Zagat's next chapter with The Infatuation," said co-founder Nina Zagat in a statement.

"Their innovative approach, and their passion for helping people discover great restaurants and for building community lines up exactly with what we built with Zagat from the very beginning."

Stang said he's hoping that Zagat's reputation and brand recognition will help boost the street cred of his own restaurant guide, which so far covers eight US cities from Los Angeles to New York, and London.

Prior to helming the site full-time, Stang was the VP of marketing at Atlantic Records and worked with musical acts like Coldplay, Bruno Mars, Skrillex, Gnarls Barkley and Panic! At the Disco.

The Infatuation also has restaurant city guides for 16 cities around the world from Paris to Cape Town, Tokyo to Sydney.

Meanwhile, the US$151mil (RM589.4mil) acquisition of Zagat back in 2011 was supposed to enrich Google Maps and Google's own restaurant reviews generated from Google+ users.

Zagat was founded in 1979 and helped pioneer the concept of user-generated content.

The Infatuation launched in 2009 and reaches about three million people a month. — AFP Relaxnews