[AlbertCory]

This reminds me of Google under Marissa Mayer buying Zagat. Remember them?

Big company buys small company, dismembers it into little pieces controlled by managers who weren't fans of the acquisition and don't respect it -- it's an old story. The founder of the acquiree quits in frustration, etc. etc.

[gkanai]

The Zagats were paid $150M for their business. Whatever frustration they may have is cushioned by that payout.

[AlbertCory]

That's them. For Conde, wasted money. As with Google.

As for Zagat, Tim told us he wanted a secure job for his people after he was gone. The jury is out on that one.

[ghaff]

Zagat was pretty small potatoes. It sorta made sense at a time when foodies was sort of an artisanal thing. Not sure Google even lost out on the buy.

[AlbertCory]

This was 2011. Foodies were well past artisanal by then.

As for Google: 'splain me why it wasn't just $150M down the drain? Minus the undisclosed amount:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zagat

On March 6, 2018, Google sold the company to restaurant discovery platform The Infatuation for an undisclosed amount

[demondemidi]

> This was 2011. Foodies were well past artisanal by then.

What does this mean?

[AlbertCory]

Wasn't clear, sorry.

In the evolution of popular tastes, being a foodie was not limited to a rarified minority who liked artisanal food.

In other words, dining out and reading about it had become a mainstream activity.

[mturmon]

offal, I guess

[resolutebat]

The Zagat acquisition was not driven by Marissa, but another exec at Google Travel. When he was turfed out, that signaled the end for Zagat as well.

[AlbertCory]

Even Wikipedia knows you're wrong.

Not to mention: I was there when she stood up and told us how she'd made the acquisition. I don't know who your information comes from, but stop listening to them.

[resolutebat]

Just because Marissa took the credit doesn't mean it was her idea.

[AlbertCory]

since you seem to have some inside information that Wikipedia and all of us at Google were not privy to: who is the source?

[fvrghl]

Wikipedia says otherwise:

"On September 8, 2011, the company was acquired by Google for more than $150 million, the 10th largest acquisition by Google as of that date, at the championing of Marissa Mayer, its Vice President of Local, Maps, and Location Services."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zagat

[brvsft]

This sounds ridiculous because Google was never "under" Marissa Mayer. She wasn't the CEO, so ultimately it was up to someone else. And if anyone wants me to believe that someone other than the CEO was responsible for an acquisition, and such a perspective is anything but shifting the blame from the CEO, they're going to have to try really hard to make that argument. Harder than the maximum number of characters allowed in a single HN comment.

[AlbertCory]

She was head of Local at the time, which included Maps. Since I was in Maps, I sat right around the corner from her. Her credibility as the original owner of the Search UI was off the charts, although she'd pissed off enough people by 2011 that she wasn't actually in charge of it anymore.

She introduced Tim and Nina and took full credit for it. If your point is that she must have gotten the OK from Larry, Sergey, and Eric -- no argument. Any big initiative has some champion, who depends on top management approval. That doesn't mean that the CEO is personally the driver of everything.

It would not have happened had she not pushed it. If you can't accept that, then we'll just have to call this discussion Done. I was there; you weren't.

[smcin]

There's a difference between buying a media property to try to sell more content(/advertising) into its subscriberbase(/userbase), vs keeping it as a going concern. Or sometimes, companies acquire into newer markets to try to boost their valuations based on P/E ratio.

AOL-Time-Warner (1998) and then AOL-Time-Warner-Netscape (2001) spring to mind. Although those were all pre-Enron, pre-SarbOx valuations.

[AlbertCory]

That's what they say in the C suite anyway.

[smcin]

The oxygen was pretty rarefied in 1999-2001. Maybe they used nitrous.

[mjmsmith]

Vindigo with Zagat was peak mobile internet. It's been downhill since 2002.

[AlbertCory]

I'm not getting the connection. This says Zingy, not Zagat.

https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/vindigo-inc

[mjmsmith]

Early versions of Vindigo showed Zagat reviews in restaurant info, later versions used Gayot.