In what seems like an effort to aid restaurant goers in scoping out a place to eat (or relate to picky urban foodies who need reassurance that the place they're dining at is actually the best), Google announced this morning that it has acquired the food rating site Zagat.

"Moving forward, Zagat will be a cornerstone of our local offering--delighting people with their impressive array of reviews, ratings and insights," said Marissa Mayer, VP of Local, Maps and Location Services, in a blog post this morning on Google's official BlogSpot. "I'm incredibly excited to collaborate with Zagat to bring the power of Google search and Google Maps to their products and users."

Remember when the internet didn't require you to press a button to tell it that you "liked" something? Back before the function became ubiquitous on social networking sites across the web, users would simply link back to a page or tell their friends about it. But not anymore. Now you've got to "like" something, or "share" it to one of your many other social networking sites for your friends to garner any interest. Well, Google's trying hard to jump on that same bandwagon with its release of the Google +1 button extension for Chrome.

If you thought that Google+ and that pesky +1 button was going anywhere, you were seriously wrong. Wired reports that Google is planning on turning that +1 button you see pop up on the web into a crowd sourcing tool to figure out what you're reading. The move would usher Google into the new era of search with its social networking offerings and maybe even change the way advertisers use search to make money.