Zagat

The Zagat Survey was established by Tim and Nina Zagat in 1979 as a way to collect and correlate the ratings of restaurants by diners. Their first guide covered New York City dining, and was accomplished on the basis of a survey of their friends. By 2005, the Zagat Survey included 70 cities, with reviews based on the input of 250,000 individuals. The Guides, over the years, have reported on and rated restaurants, hotels, nightlife, shopping, zoos, music, movies, theaters, golf courses, and airlines. Zagat guide ratings are on a five-point scale, 5 being the highest and 1 is the lowest, with component ratings for defined areas, e.g., for restaurants, including food, decor, and service (with cost also being estimated). In addition to numeric scores, the survey also includes a short descriptive paragraph that incorporates selected quotations (typically a few words) from several reviewers' comments about each restaurant or service, as well as the pricing and rating information.

In 1999, Tim and Nina Zagat's son, Ted Zagat, joined Zagat and served as president and COO until 2007.

Zagat's distinctive thirty-point rankings were replaced with a five-point scale for products not at the Zagat website, following acquisition by Google in September 2011. In March 2018, Zagat was sold by Google to The Infatuation, a restaurant rating app.

Reorganization, departures, Frommer's acquisition

However, as the reorganization by Page continued, and further decisions were made by Google management, the commitment to the Mayer vision for Zagat waned. Page's assignment of Susan Wojcicki to head Google's advertising area led to the move of another Google veteran, Jeff Huber, to lead the very large "Geo and Commerce" area, a new combined group that would eventually include the Zagat team (alongside Google Maps & Earth, Travel, Shopping, Wallet, and other endeavors). This reorganization left Marissa Mayer without a comparable leadership position, instead placing her as a report to her "peer" Huber; Mayer departed Google thereafter, to become the CEO of Yahoo! in July 2012. Other management changes were harbingers of a challenging year for this group (e.g., executive firings and departures, including "the entire team that launched Google Wallet"), and Huber eventually moved from managing Geo and Commerce to join the Google X research team.

Mayer's departure as champion of Zagat's acquisition and expansion, Huber's challenges in leading the large disparate Geo and Commerce group, and Google management's decision on a further acquisition – Frommer's, the venerable travel guide publisher, in August 2012 – appear, in concert, as evidence of changing plans of management for the original Zagat team. After the standard Google all-hands meeting where the Frommer's acquisition was announced and discussed, contractors ceased to be invited to these Google meetings. In this period, Hernandez continued to lead the Zagat group, where it is reported that Google reorientation of Zagat from their original business model to "'Zagatize' the world... [through] 100,000 ratings for small businesses" resulted in missed editorial production goals and Zagat contractor resentment toward the new Frommer's Googlers they perceived as having been given their positions.

Acquisition by The Infatuation

On March 6, 2018, Google transferred ownership of the brand and assets to restaurant review website The Infatuation. They did not disclose the deal amount. The Infatuation CEO and Co-founder Chris Stang released a statement that the company was "thrilled by this opportunity to acquire such a pioneering and trusted restaurant guide as Zagat... it is the perfect complement to what we have been building at The Infatuation." They will reportedly operate as two distinct brands, with The Infatuation retaining its editorial-first focus and Zagat will expand user surveys and develop a new tech-driven platform. In November, 2019 the print version of the guide was relaunched after a three-year hiatus.