Flying visit
If it achieves nothing else, Microsoft's attempt to take market share from Google with Bing is certainly keeping the search giant on its toes. Both companies are striving to demonstrate their search services offer more value than the other and yesterday it was Google's turn to strike a blow.
Google announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire ITA Software - a company that specialises in organising all kinds of flight data, including schedules and prices. The purpose of the acquisition is for Google to become a first port of call when looking for flights, in the same ways as it currently is for websites.
"ITA's very talented team has created an impressive product to organize flight information," said Eric Schmidt, Chairman and CEO of Google. "Their technology opens exciting possibilities for us to create new ways for users to more easily find flight information online, and we're looking forward to welcoming them to Google."
In a blog post, Google VP for search products Marissa Mayer said: "Once we've completed our acquisition of ITA, we'll work on creating new flight search tools that will make it easier for you to search for flights, compare flight options and prices and get you quickly to a site where you can buy your ticket."
To us, this looks pretty scary for existing online travel sites like Expedia. Why bother to go to them now that you can just ‘Google it'? On the flip-side, Google won't be selling flights itself, so we get back to the classic Google model of sponsored searches, we guess.
Here's what Google has to say on the matter in the online FAQ for the deal: "Our goal has always been to provide users with what we think is the best and most useful information possible. We see opportunities to improve the search experience for users searching for flight information on Google. It's important to note that our goal will be to refer people quickly to a site where they can actually purchase flights, and that we have no plans to sell flights ourselves."
But in the diagram below, you can see where Google sees ITA's role is in the flight booking ecosystem. Not only is it competing with Expedia, but feeding data directly to Bing. This could get interesting.
