Google Pays $125M to Dine With Zagat

Google Inc. has reportedly paid about $125 million to acquire restaurant-rating company Zagat.

Google announced the deal on Thursday but didn't disclose the price it paid for the New York-based company.

A source told The Wall Street Journal that the purchased was for around $125 million.

Zagat, a trusted source of restaurant, hotel and destination reviews, will no doubt help Google, an Internet search leader, create and maintain more original content.

Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president for local, maps and location services, on Thursday said she's thrilled her company made the acquisition.

"Moving forward, Zagat will be a cornerstone of our local offering - delighting people with their impressive array of reviews, ratings and insights, while enabling people everywhere to find extraordinary (and ordinary) experiences around the corner and around the world," Mayer wrote in a blog post. "With Zagat, we gain a world-class team that has more experience in consumer based-surveys, recommendations and reviews than anyone else in the industry."

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The restaurant review company was founded by Tim and Nina Zagat more than 32 years ago, and has since established itself as a trusted brand all over the world over. It operates in 13 categories and more than 100 cities.

The Zagats confirmed the acquisition on their company's Web site and noted that they believe the union is the right next step for their employees, users and for their business. They said all will benefit from the additional resources and reach that Google provides.

"Going forward, we will remain active in the business as co-Chairs, helping to ensure that the combination of Zagat's and Google's assets and capabilities will maximize our product quality and growth," the couple wrote.

Mayer said the Zagats have demonstrated their ability to innovate and to do so with tremendous insight.

"Their surveys may be one of the earliest forms of UGC (user-generated content) -gathering restaurant recommendations from friends, computing and distributing ratings before the Internet as we know it today even existed, she wrote on the blog.

She added that the company's iconic pocket-sized guides with paragraphs summarizing and "snippeting" sentiment were "mobile" before "mobile" involved electronics.

"Today, Zagat provides people with a democratized, authentic and comprehensive view of where to eat, drink, stay, shop and play worldwide based on millions of reviews and ratings," she wrote. "For all of these reasons, I'm incredibly excited to collaborate with Zagat to bring the power of Google search and Google Maps to their products and users, and to bring their innovation, trusted reputation and wealth of experience to our users."

Before the acquisition, Mayer said about two years ago friend asked her if she knew there's a place in Menlo Park near the Safeway that has a 27 food rating.

"I was struck because I immediately knew what it meant. Food rating... 30 point scale... Zagat. And the place... had to be good. With no other context, I instantly recognized and trusted Zagat's review and recommendation," Mayer wrote.

A year after 9/11, finding a New York that persevered

I went to New York nine years ago to report on the first anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks and found a city that was not only moving forward, but one that had never stopped.

New York City is an extraordinary place. Generations of Americans and millions of foreign immigrants have been thrilled by its kinetic energy, its opportunities for exploration and reinvention.

But, being one of the city's upstate cousins, we don't always appreciate its greatness. Sometimes, we even resent the place. But 10 years ago, you could not feel anything but grief for the casualties and admiration for the resilience of the survivors.

The terrorists who destroyed the Twin Towers did not bring New York to its knees. Even as the towers burned, and fell, hundreds of New Yorkers were rushing toward Ground Zero, to help in any way they could.

That very day, New York began to recover and rebuild. By a year later, what was most remarkable about

the city was the way everyone was going about their business, hustling and honking, showing up and showing off.

New York, with its gaping wound, was still New York.

I walked and rode all over downtown Manhattan that day, from the subways to the Staten Island ferry to the top of the Empire State Building.

Everywhere, people were moving with a purpose, getting to work, whether on Wall Street or simply on the street, where they sold paintings or souvenirs or hot dogs.

No one was frozen in fear. No one cringed when planes went over. But no one was forgetting, either.

A man getting on the ferry from Staten Island to Manhattan turned pale and walked away after telling me he had been on the ferry that morning a year before and had seen the first plane go screaming overhead.

A New York firefighter and his wife and son stood at the rail of the ferry as we glided into Manhattan, talking about the gap in the skyline where the towers had stood.

Tourists atop the Empire State Building, once again the city's tallest skyscraper, gazed through coin-operated binoculars and peered down the scores of floors to the street, from which sounds rose up, the moan of a siren, the clamor of a jackhammer.

A man talked about his son, who had worked in one of the towers and had escaped but who had changed, growing distant, separating from his wife, staying holed up in his house outside the city.

The scars were there, but, except for the hole at Ground Zero, where the cleanup was proceeding, they were hard to spot. Few people were injured in the attacks. They either died or they survived uninjured and the dead had been buried months before.

New Yorkers were, and are, left to deal in their own time with difficult memories and painful loss.

Meanwhile, thousands of new arrivals flood into the city each year, adding to the energy that pulses in the streets and cannot be cut off, not even by an event as traumatic as Sept. 11.

Official: Al Qaeda Terror Threat Looking More Like a 'Goose Chase'

A possible Al Qaeda plot to launch an attack during the 10th anniversary weekend of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks is "looking more and more like a goose chase," a senior U.S. official told Fox News on Saturday.

Federal authorities have been questioning all day the credibility of a tip from a previously reliable source that that Al Qaeda had planned to attack Washington or New York, putting though both cities on high alert.

But authorities have not been able to corroborate any of the information from the source.

"The threat is looking less and less credible," the official said, adding that the entire plot as outlined by the source "doesn't seem feasible."

"The time frame doesn't make sense for when these operatives would have been moving into position," the official said. "We are going back to the original source. The president will be briefed on it again in the morning, but people are questioning the credibility of this information at this time. Something is not adding up."

But officials say they won't rest until they review every last detail.

Word that Al Qaeda had ordered the mission reached U.S. officials midweek. A CIA informant who has proved reliable in the past approached intelligence officials overseas to say that three men of Arab descent -- at least two of whom could be U.S. citizens -- had been ordered by newly minted Al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahri to mark the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks Sunday by doing harm on U.S. soil.

According to the intelligence, they were to detonate a car bomb in one of the cities. Should that mission prove impossible, the attackers have been told to simply cause as much destruction as they can.

It's still unclear whether any such individuals even exist, according to U.S. officials.

"We don't have a smoking gun yet," Brenda Heck, a top counterterrorism official in the FBI's Washington field office, told Fox News."It is going to take a little bit to completely flush this out. We certainly -- hour by hour -- we are learning more."

Earlier Saturday, the head of the FBI's Washington field office, James McJunkin, said he doesn't expect that there will be any problem "over the anniversary weekend."

If the the tip had not come on the eve of the 9/11  anniversary, the intelligence community likely would not have acted and alerted the public to this degree, the senior official said.

"We couldn't ignore it," the official said. "But something doesn't add up: the routing, the timing of the assets moving into position."

Heck said it's "absolutely possible" authorities will never know whether the alleged plot was in fact real.

In the meantime, extra security was put in place to protect the people in the two cities that took the brunt of the jetliner attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon a decade ago. It was the worst terror assault in the nation's history, and Al Qaeda has long dreamed of striking again to mark the anniversary. But it could be weeks before the intelligence community can say whether this particular threat is real.

The New York Police Department was paying special attention to the thefts of three vans Sunday, scrutinizing them them to eliminate the possibility of their being tied to a larger threat. One van was stolen from a Jersey City facility, while the other two were stolen last week from a company that does work at the World Trade Center site.

Also Sunday, an explosives detection K9 unit alarmed on a cargo pallet as it was being loaded onto a plane at Dulles International Airport. Authorities evacuated several gates as a precaution, but determined there was nothing harmful about the suspicious boxes.

Briefed on the threat Friday morning, President Obama instructed his security team to take "all necessary precautions," the White House said. Obama still planned to travel to New York on Sunday to mark the 10th anniversary with stops that day at the Pentagon and Shanksville, Pa.

Heck, the FBI counterterrorism official, said the government's response to the latest threat "has been a little different" than at other times.

"We have been very open with the public on this," she said. "I think there will be some debate about that after we get through this weekend. [But] I think there's a very positive side to letting the public know a little bit more about what we are doing behind the scenes."

In particular, she said, by letting the public know about a threat quickly, "They can help us with what's going on out in the public areas so that we can respond if something is suspicious."

In fact, Washington Police Chief Cathy Lanier said suspicious reporting has surged by as much as 30 percent, a change that she called "very reassuring."

Stocks fall sharply as Europe worries deepen

NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks are falling sharply in midday trading as worries deepen about Europe's debt crisis and the weak U.S. economy.

Tuesday's losses in the U.S. market followed heavy selling in Europe. The Stoxx 600 Europe index is down nearly 5 percent this week.

U.S. bank stocks fell more than the overall market. Federal regulators filed lawsuits late Friday against 17 major banks over mortgage securities that lost value. Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. fell 4 percent.

A better reading on growth in the U.S. service sector did little to stem the market's losses.

The Dow fell 233 points, or 2 percent, to 11,007. The S&P 500 fell 24, or 2.1 percent, to 1,149. The Nasdaq fell 44, or 1.8 percent, to 2,436.

Texas wildfires: More than 1,000 homes lost, thousands evacuated

The wildfires in Texas continue to roar out of control, destroying more than 1,000 homes. With seemingly no end to the flames in sight, more than 5,000 residents were evacuated from the most-threatened areas.

Gov. Rick Perry told CBS that he hopes that today's forecast calling for cooler temperatures and slowing winds would help firefighters make headway. But he stressed: "It's still a very critical and very fluid situation."

The fires are being fueled by unforgiving weather conditions -- the region's relentless drought conditions and high winds attributed to former Tropical Storm Lee.

Photos: Texas wildfires

The disaster continued to unfold overnight: 22 new fires cropped up, at least 10 of which were labeled "large" by the Texas Forest Service. Combined, they have already consumed more than 7,544 acres. In all, there are an estimated 85 fires burning in the state.

Some of the newest fires were triggered by power lines that were torn down in the winds, or by residents barbecuing or getting in some chores -- such as welding -- over the long Labor Day weekend. Such seemingly innocent activities offered just enough spark to fuel a fire. 

"It's hot, dry and windy," Melanie Stradling, a spokeswoman for the Texas Forest Service, told The Times. "It's extremely hot on a regular basis, and you've got high winds and heat and lack of rain."

The wildfires are particularly serious in Bastrop County, east of Austin, where more than 5,000 residents were evacuated. At least 476 homes were destroyed there, the highest number of homes ever lost in a single fire in Texas history.

In the town of Bastrop itself, helicopters and planes loaded with water could be seen overhead as firefighters converged around homes catching fire along a state highway outside the city.

"Waiting is the most frustrating thing," said Gina Thurman, 47, choking back tears as she sat by herself on a curb outside Ascension Catholic Church, one of several shelters in the area. "You're sitting there and you don't know anything but your house is probably burning."

Perry, considered by many to be the Republican front-runner in the race for the White House, canceled plans to appear at a candidate forum in South Carolina on Monday so he could deal with the unfolding disaster. It was unclear whether he would make Wednesday's debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library & Museum in Simi Valley.