zagat

Yelp inks deal for Bing Local Search

When Google announced that it was acquiring Zagat, it looked problematic. After all, Zagat was a publisher struggling to stay relevant in the digital age and Google was the world’s biggest search engine. The potential conflicts the deal could create were huge.

One of the companies likely to have been most concerned with the acquisition was Yelp. Along with other popular user-generated reviews sites, it has arguably played a key role in Zagat’s woes. With Google behind it, would the Mountain View-based company push Zagat content at the expense of a company like Yelp, which it once reportedly looked to buy?

Is Google’s Zagat acquisition its most problematic ever?

Yesterday, Google announced that it is acquiring Zagat, a company whose name has become synonymous with printed restaurant guides. By size, the acquisition is likely nowhere near Google’s largest.

As observed by TechCrunch, it appears that the acquisition price was under $66m.

But Google’s Zagat acquisition has created quite a lot of buzz, and for good reason: this could arguably be Google’s most problematic and challenging acquisition ever.

Geomarketing: Ten Foursquare marketing campaigns

Geolocation-based social network Foursquare just might be the internet’s ‘next big thing‘. While it isn’t anywhere close to the size of Twitter or Facebook, the young company last month passed the million user mark.

That’s a memorable milestone for any consumer internet startup, but the company’s progress is perhaps better measured by the number of marketing deals it has inked with bigger companies. Here are 10 of those deals.