Add air travel to the growing number of markets that Google now plays in. The search giant has launched its new Flight Search feature on its popular search engine.
When a user enters a query into the search engine that relates to flight information, such as "flights from New York to Los Angeles," a Flights link appears on the left side of the screen. That leads to Flight Search, which also can be reached directly at google.com/flights.
ITA Technology
Google is touting several advantages to Flight Search over conventional travel-agency sites, such as very fast results. There is also a simple, easy-to-scan results list of potential flights, on which the user can then drill down for more details. Clicking on a flight shows return options, and there's a booking button next to results.
Travel dates can be scanned quickly by clicking arrows to change depart and return dates, length of stay, and price. Columns for takeoff time, flight duration, arrival, airline, route, and round-trip price can be sorted by clicking on the column heading. Filters are automatically set to focus on price and duration, but they can be modified to expand the options.
Engineering Director Kourosh Gharachorloo noted on the official Google Search blog that this search capability allows a user to readily "use the map and filters to see where you can go from San Francisco within three hours for less than $300."
Online Travel Sites
Google said the flight results are not related to any paid relationships the company has with any airlines, and that the search points directly to the airline websites only.
Laura DiDio, an analyst with industry research firm Information Technology Intelligence Corp,, said that online travel agencies such as Orbis or Travelocity have reason to be worried, but not to be panicked.
"It's now up to them to come up with new features that add value to their sites," she said.
The technology behind Flight Search is built on travel tools Google acquired when it bought ITA Software for $700 million last year.
Many of the travel agencies use the same data from ITA Software, which is one of the reasons the U.S. Justice Department looked into Google's acquisition of the company. The settlement, agreed upon in April of this year, requires Google to sequester ITA data from its other company databases, and to continue allowing the use of ITA technology on "fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms" by the travel agencies, but only through 2016.
But the settlement did not address whether Google's domination of the search-engine market meant that it had an unfair advantage over the travel agency sites, since users who otherwise would use Google to find a travel agency might now go directly from Google to an airline for flight purchases.
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