Expedia, Travelocity say Google has crossed the "creepy line"

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/10/expedia-travelocity-say-google-has-crossed-the-creepy-line.ars

by evo_9 • 16 years ago

38 40 16 years ago

Search engines are expanding from web searches to information searches. Since search users were really after information in the first place, it's hard to argue Google isn't providing better search results.

yanw• 16 years ago

Companies like Expedia worry that the acquisition could lead Google to present a matrix of actual fares on its search results page

How is that not consumer positive?

bobf• 16 years ago

That seems to be the crux of the issue. Consumer positive is apparently not in Expedia/Travelocity's best interests. Dredging up old Stanford-days quotes of Google's founders seems a bit disingenuous.

alecco3• 16 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabre_(computer_system)#Controv...

mkramlich• 16 years ago

To the extent it's not consumer positive it's like Windows and IE, vs Netscape, et al. Windows and Word, vs other word processors, etc.

By Google integrating and promoting their own information service at the top of search results it's very similar to Microsoft bundling, promoting and defaulting to their own in-house equivalents to what would otherwise be third-party apps sold by separate businesses. Is that a net win for consumers? Not sure. It's both good and bad. But it's definitely a chilling effect for those other vendors -- assuming they don't get a juicy buyout or licensing deal in order to be adapted into the very thing they would otherwise fear. In this case, an integrated travel search promoted by Google.

ceejayoz• 16 years ago

> By Google integrating and promoting their own information service at the top of search results it's very similar to Microsoft bundling, promoting and defaulting to their own in-house equivalents to what would otherwise be third-party apps sold by separate businesses.

Sort of, but it's as if Microsoft is still stuck on the IE3 release and grumping about Mozilla Firefox 4 being better. The Expedia quote basically says "dear God, Google might actually make a usable fare finder instead of presenting users with a useless interface designed to make it hard to find the actual low fares we promote!"

exit2• 16 years ago

do reference librarians have an anticompetitive practices case against google?

wmf• 16 years ago

It would be consumer positive if Google shows the optimal flights (according to the user's criteria) and the lowest fares. If Google shows suboptimal results, it's likely that people will just take those rather than go to another site that provides better results.

ZeroMinx• 16 years ago

I just want a good web search for finding and booking flights.

Expedia and friends could work on improving their websites instead of complaining..

Just tried Expedia now, flying London - Stockholm in December. Next screen I could choose "specific dates" or "flexible". Clicking flexible, page reloaded, saying "This route doesn't support that". So then I clicked "specific dates". This threw me back to the front page, with the flight search form empty.

They won't find much sympathy from me..

Retric• 16 years ago

If Expedia was worth using then people would go back to it vs. praying that Google will come up with something better.

I want a travel site that gives Google style search results based on my preferred time of day, start and end locations, and price. If it's 200 dollars cheaper to use a less convenient airport or an evening flight then show it to me but I would rather use the local airport etc. Yet, the only option for most people is to use all these crappy search systems to build such a list by hand.

PS: Expedia does not even provide suggestions when someone has a typo EX: 'Washinton DC'. It then asks which one of several local airports to use (you can't pick more than one). No wonder they are afraid of Google.

benologist• 16 years ago

The article raises a pretty good point regardless of what fixable usability issue some site has:

"Companies like Expedia worry that the acquisition could lead Google to present a matrix of actual fares on its search results page, above all of the other sites that sell tickets. At that point, the key question becomes: which sites will Google's results link to, and what (if anything) will be the cost of those links?"

This affects more than just entrenched guys, it means newcomers will also have to buy their way to the top as well.

lmkg• 16 years ago

Not to defend Expedia, but if Google puts their own travel results on the front page, improving Expedia's website wouldn't help them. It could be made of gold-plated strippers, but no one would ever find out because they'd just use Google's flight search, even if Google's flight search sucked. Not that Google would make a crappy flight search (especially with ITA), but the point is that even if other companies did innovate and did make a better flight search that is theoretically better for the consumer, that still wouldn't be able to beat Google putting their own thingy on the front SERP. Don't get me wrong, Google's move is probably better for the consumer and Expedia does suck and deserves to get crushed on its own merit (or lack thereof), but despite that, "just do a better job" is not a viable option, and Expedia's complaints that Google has an anticompetitive advantage are legitimate.

tesseract• 16 years ago

Is ITA the only plausible source of flight data? If not, then what's the big deal? And if so, then it seems like they have a monopoly advantage regardless of whether they are bought by Google or not.

moultano2• 16 years ago

Bing is already doing this. If you want to complain, complain about vertical integration in search engines in general not Google trying to keep feature parity with competitors. You can't prevent someone from building a better product just because their product is popular.

apr• 16 years ago

I disagree. Expedia has long had an option to innovate and really improve their offering, instead they chose to rest on their laurels and milk the customers. I see it as a good thing that Google moves into the space and will give it some serious shake-up.

On the aside I just can't wait till the Ticketmaster's monopoly is disrupted.

emmett• 16 years ago

You mean just like Fandango went out of business when Google started offering movie times? Or how wikipedia died after Knol? Or how there aren't any more weather sites now that Google offers weather?

exit2• 16 years ago

i don't feel forced to use google, so it doesn't inspire the contempt i had for microsoft when it was facing accusations of anticompetitive practices

eljaco• 16 years ago

hipmunk.com and bing.com/travel are doing an awesome job with making it easier for all of us. Hopefully Google can do the same or (hopefully) better.

bemmu• 16 years ago

Now that you mention Hipmunk, I just became convinced that Google will acquire them. A market they are interested in with a small team of talented hackers with a product with proven traction, who probably wouldn't mind working for Google on their own project (since the lead dev already worked in a similar arrangement before) if the price is right.

kn0thing• 16 years ago

Bemmu, we're gonna have to pay you a commission soon ;) thanks, dude.

jfb• 16 years ago

Everybody draws their own creepy line. Expedia & Travelocity draw theirs up at the edge of their shitty, consumer-hostile business models.

rjett• 16 years ago

This is just a last-ditch effort by these sites to retain their only competitive advantage: privileged access to ITA data. I don't see anything "creepy" about this merger though...classic fear-mongering.

sprout• 16 years ago

The last time I tried to buy a ticket, I failed to find anyone among them who recognized + as a valid character to have in an email address. I'm not sure whether their engineers are incompetent, or just looking to spam me.

Well, I know the latter is true, but the former is up for debate. In any case, I'm looking forward to people selling tickets that won't require me to give them my root email address, and probably won't even want to spam me.

netaustin• 16 years ago

I have long wondered why airlines don't put considerably more pressure on online brokers than they do, and I think this debate is missing their perspective. They would probably agree that airfares on the first page of search results would benefit consumers. Look at the about page on FairSearch.org. No airlines!

ghurlman• 16 years ago

Also no Orbitz - owned by airlines.

khandelwal• 16 years ago

I believe Orbitz is no longer owned by the airlines. It started off that way, though.

chrisaycock2• 16 years ago

Orbitz is a publicly traded company whose largest shareholder is Blackstone. It is NOT owned by the airlines:

http://moneycentral.msn.com/ownership?Holding=Institutional+...

binarymax• 16 years ago

Strange. At these companies inception they presumably had no issue shoving 'middleman' travel agents out of the picture. They are now the middleman. Innovate or be disrupted.

goatforce5• 16 years ago

So if ITA is so damn important to their business, why aren't Expedia, Travelocity, et al forming a consortium to go and buy ITA?

ojbyrne• 16 years ago

Because Google have already bought it?

borism• 16 years ago

and because ITA itself is not important for them. Losing control of the information that goes from ITA to consumers is why they make a fuss out of this.

alecco3• 16 years ago

Their GDSs are crap sometimes still running on mainframes. Also the airline fares scam comes from the same groups. They purposely keept alternatives out for decades. Karma.

JoeAltmaier• 16 years ago

Still, its a short step to Google putting their own travel results at the top of every travel-related search. Its got to improve Google ticket-sales conversions and hurt others.

Its a bit (a lot) anticompetitive, for sure. But the alternative is, nationalize Google like the post office, and regulate them.

hyperbovine• 16 years ago

This is why we don't build our entire business on the back of a third-party vendor.

alecco3• 16 years ago

Old GDS-backed oligopolistic portals with their deals under the table deserve this and 1000x more.

Come on Google/Ita!

chrisaycock2• 16 years ago

The list of companies supporting Fair Search is a bit disingenuous. There's a lot of double-counting to make it look like more firms are against the Google move.

Expedia owns both TripAdvisor and Hotwire.

Sabre Holdings owns Travelocity (and is a direct competitor to ITA).

Kayak owns SideStep.

nhashem• 16 years ago

For what it's worth, Expedia actually uses its own fare search and pricing engine, called Best Fare Search.

http://www.tnooz.com/2010/05/10/news/if-google-reins-in-ita-...

If anything if Google acquires ITA and exercises tyrannical control over the data, it could open a door for Expedia to license their data to companies like Kayak and TripAdvisor.

chc• 16 years ago

Sounds more like Expedia and Travelocity have crossed the "afraid of competition line." There's nothing creepy about Google providing flight info. These companies are just repeating any negative things they've heard said about Google, and they're not even being subtle about it.

This definitely makes me like Orbitz more.

Expedia, Travelocity say Google has crossed the "creepy line"

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