Alexis Madrigal evaluates the company's decision to buy Zagat:
All around, this is a fascinating move. Google has previously shied away from making its own content, preferring to aggregate a la Google News. In fact, not a single one of Googles 100-plus acquisitions was a content company. Zagat, though, is a pure content play and there's no getting around that. The convergence of every media, technology, and electronics company takes one more small step.
John Battelle contemplates the purchase:
[I]t's easy to argue that this was a small, strategic buy to support Google's local offering. Then again…Blogger, YouTube, and GoogleTV are not small efforts at Google. And if I were an independent publisher who focused on the travel and entertainment category, I'd be more than a bit concerned about how my content might rank in Google compared to Zagat. Just ask Yelp.
The Dish 