In a way, Hotpot is still simmering inside Places, and Google hasn't gone completely cold on the idea of local recommendations. But a quick glance at a mobile Place Page will show that Hotpot's ratings and place discovery features are buried so far down that users will need to scroll to find them.
Google is positioning the restructuring as a graduation day for Hotpot.
"The [Hotpot] community has quickly expanded to millions of users who are rating more than one million times per month and enjoying a truly personalized view of the world," writes Hotpot product manager Lior Ron.
The change in direction, however, signifies internal disarray when it comes to Google's strategy around place discovery. It might even be related to Thursday's senior level shakeup, as Jeff Huber has just assumed the role of senior vice president of commerce and local.
The original idea behind Hotpot was to encourage users to rate and review venues and add friends so they could get personalized recommendations tailored to their tastes. To push users into leaving recommendations, Google released both iPhone and Android apps for Hotpot and expanded the product to support more than 47 languages.