Google Inc (GOOG) To Show Restaurant Prices, Menus In Search Results

Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) [stockdata ticker=”GOOG”] has come up with yet another new service that can disrupt an entirely industry. The Internet giant said in a Google+ post that it is working on a new feature that will show restaurant menus and prices on the first page of its search results when a user looks for information on a particular restaurant.

Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) [stockdata ticker=”GOOG”] said that it will help users make informed decisions before they reserve a table for lunch or dinner. Before planning a date night or brunch, you can search on Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) to see whether the menu has something that everyone in your group would love. It will also show different tabs for various parts of the menu, like dinner, brunch, appetizers, etc. The company currently offers the feature only in the U.S.

Google Inc didn’t provide details about how it will acquire the menu and pricing data from millions of restaurants around the world to power its menu feature. This new service is likely to hurt two companies badly: Yelp and Foursquare. They already offer restaurant menus, but neither of them has as much traffic as Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) [stockdata ticker=”GOOG”], so their market share in the menu viewing business is likely to decline.

But the biggest victim of the search engine giant’s new feature will be the restaurant industry. It is an industry that has long relied on paper menus. Customers had to physically show up at the restaurant to decide what to eat, but now that process is going to change. People can make their decisions about where to eat and what to eat even before physically visiting the restaurant. That will affect the foot traffic restaurants rely on.

Over the past few years, Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) [stockdata ticker=”GOOG”] has introduced several new features in its search page. The company has rolled out the information graph feature. It uses pieces of information from IMDb and Wikipedia to provide users a precise summary of the film, place, person, or topic users are looking for, and then it introduced a product listing ads feature. When a user searches for a particular product, on the right side of the search page they will see the list of online retail stores selling that product along with the price.

Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) [stockdata ticker=”GOOG”] shares skidded 0.06% to $1,201.94 in pre-market trading Tuesday.