Google Hotpot – If you’re already familiar with Foursquare, the Google Hotpot service offers the same underlining service concept -social networking with friends based on geo-location and business ratings- only it does it much, much better. Google has exceeded Foursquare’s service in every possible way, thanks to a large scale combination of the various Google tools; maps and street view, altitude, and search (including images, user reviews, related articles and loads more ) all come into play to offer an ultra geo-location service.

The end result is an all-you-could-possibly-need geo-location service, aimed mostly at the wine & dine aspect of entertainment (search restaurants, diners, cafes, etc.). You can see the screen shot below of the restaurant search I did, ending up with the Spotted Pig, a British restaurant in the West Village neighborhood of NYC. You will see how one page includes all the basic information (phone number, map and driving directions, menu), BUT there are also photos of the restaurant and its dishes (including a street-view), actual reviews of former guests of the restaurant, a list of related places and more formal, critic-based restaurant reviews.

I didn’t stop at the Hotpot’s eating-related business search and looked for cool museums to visit in San Francisco. Did Google Hotpot live up to my expectation? Oh yeah.

Just think of this service’s extreme usefulness in the mobile context. You could search for practically any kind of business or entertainment venue near you in real-time, in a matter of minutes, see what bistros your friends have been to and recommend others to visit as well, how to get there, even what to order. As expected, this is another phenomenal service by Google.