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Last Friday, Google announced they are dropping the Google Hotpot name and folding it into Google Places.
Google said, "rolling Hotpot into Google Places helps simplify the connection between the places that are rated and reviewed and the more than 50 million places that already have an online presence through Google Places - places that millions of people search for and find every day on Google."
Google launched Hotpot in November of last year and has continued to expand its presence in Google properties. Google said they have "released an iPhone and Android app, integrated Hotpot recommendations into Google.com and Google Maps, expanded to more than 47 languages and enabled people to share their ratings and reviews to Twitter."
That being said, the rebranding doesn't come as a surprise. Heck, even Google Places has been rebranded a bunch of times. Most recently, Google Places was known as Google Local Business Center, prior to that, Google Maps, Google Local, and so on. So the name changes, especially at Google, is not a surprise.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Comments:
Nick Roshon
04/12/2011 03:37 pm
...and yet another reason why Google sucks at Social - no one even the name of their products or keep up with all of the name changes. I never understood rolling out Hotpot as a separate identity in the first place.
googlemonopolyeu
04/12/2011 05:42 pm
Google needs to get out of places. It's a stolen content farm / scraped site. This content competes unfairly against legitimate sites in the search results. Google should have to compete within search for placement like everyone else. There is a problem when you operate as a distributor (fair and neutral marketplace) then produce cheap knock offs of the products others are selling and put those at the front door of your bizarre and hide the content producers products in a dark remote corner.
online coupons
04/13/2011 10:27 am
RT @ Google Hotpot Rolled Into Google Places - http://goo.gl/Fjrve
beckjamin
04/13/2011 05:09 pm
Who didn't see this coming?