Google can now tell you how busy a restaurant is before you get there

If you’ve ever looked at a business’s card in google search you may have noticed a bar graph outlining the typical busy times of the business.

Google has now taken this a step further to display that data in real-time. A pretty cool feature that protects us from the overarching concern of actually having to talk to a real person.

This new feature could help a lot of restaurants manage unhappy customers expecting a quick bite. Although it seems like a subtle feature I expect for certain business this will be of major interest. Sunday brunch comes to mind, when most of the best places fill up. It’ll be interesting to see if busy places stay just as busy or if hungry brunch seekers will start to differ to another spot.

This is the first update to Google’s core product in the last year. While simple I find it a very intriguing one.