Google Acquires ITA Software, Regulators May Balk

marino02 tips news that Google has acquired ITA Software, a company who sells travel-related software and information, for $700 million. "Google said it plans to use ITA's technology in its Web search tools and to allow potential passengers to shop for tickets right from Google. Travel search makes up a huge portion of Google searches, but it's a complicated type of search to express in a query box, [said Marissa Mayer]." Analysts expect the deal to come under scrutiny from the FTC. "With this deal, Google will have transformed itself into one of the biggest power brokers in the travel industry. It will control the leading software for powering online airline reservations. It will be able to provide something in its own search results above and beyond what its competitors — who merely license the ITA software — will be able to produce. And it will become the leading online advertising buy for travel-related advertisers (assuming it wasn't already) if it doesn't butcher the rollout of user-friendly airline search tools within Google's already popular interface."

Comments

Why travel?

[ArsonSmith]

With google earth and street view I don't actually need to leave the basement any more.

One of ITA's Customers is Bing

[longacre]

Hey, Bing, sorry that latest software update caused all your flights to be listed as "Oceanic 815." We'll roll out a fix for that in the next 4-6 months.

Re:One of ITA's Customers is Bing

[mandelbr0t]

In all fairness, these are the unwritten rules that the IT market plays by. However, if Google were to start playing these games, it would definitely go against their "Don't be evil" motto. A little regulation would probably go a long way in forcing big business to be reasonable in their competitive practice.

Re:Stay good!

[bsDaemon]

I occasionally find that I enjoy a product, but I don't think I've ever really rooted for a company. They're not people, nor are they moral actors, meaning there is no real good/evil associated with the company. There may be good or evil associated with the corporate leadership, but that's different. Maybe a company like RedHat, which pretty much lives or dies by its support of the community (they pay for a very great deal of kernel development and other high-profile projects) would come close, but wtf do I care if Google stays solvent or not? Another search engine will come along and then that'll be the flavor of the month for a while, and it's no skin off my back either way.

Google Maps

[Thelasko]

I'm anticipating the next time I use Google Maps to have the options of traveling by car, bike, walking, public transit, and by air.

Re:Google Maps

[hemlock00]

Why stop there, I got a bunch of useful ones.

-By Car, but you get stuck in 40 minutes of *#^&)(@# traffic

-By Bike and you get 2 flats from the road liter

-By Air, considering you're going to leave the gate on time so they can classify it as on time but then sit on the tarmac for 4 hours while they feed you some bullshit excuse like your luggage is coming when in reality the engine is on fire and they want a 2-dollar fix so they can keep your money

These would be equally, if not more helpful than the options I currently get from google.

Re:Google Maps

[Anonymous Coward]

To be honest, this would be pretty sweet.

Sort by:
* fastest
* cheapest
* shortest

Re:Google Maps

[WarJolt]

I just hope they keep the option to "Swim Across the Atlantic Ocean". My commute isn't complete until I swim 3462 miles.

Re:Google Maps

[bberens]

Yes, I'd like to go from Orlando to Las Angeles... sort by cheapest: bike, 5283 hrs.

But you'll still only be able to find southwest...

[ducomputergeek]

at southwest.com.

I find it amusing that 15 years ago people laughed because all they gave you was a bag of free bag of peanuts and a soda. Today they are a luxury because they don't charge you for bags and still give you a free bag of peanuts and a free soda.

And they are the only airline I fly domestically these days.

But corporate travel...

[Animats]

"Google has no plans to sell airline tickets to consumers", they say. However, Google Corporate Travel could be a big moneymaker. Companies will pay for outsourcing services to handle and account for their employee travel.

Re:But you'll still only be able to find southwest

[h4rr4r]

Too bad they don't offer international flights. Heck, I wish we would let international carriers offer domestic flights. Lufthansa is no wonder carrier but the service made any US carrier look like Hobo-Air.

Try it out

[feenberg]

You can use the ITA engine at http://matrix.itasoftware.com/cvg/dispatch and it is really quite good compared to most airline/agency websites. However, it won't actually sell you a ticket.

Re:Try it out

[tjhayes]

It's significantly better than "really quite good". It is EXCELLENT. It's very quick, and the searches it executes can be VERY customizable. Let's say you wanted to fly from NYC to LAX, only on United, with exactly 1 stop, and that stop MUST be in Chicago. ITA can perform that exact search for you. It's really quite amazing how well it works.

Re:Do they search all airlines?

[bwintx]

Southwest's current TV spots are focused on how its site is the only place on the Web where you can find its fares.

API

[jDeepbeep]

Definitely. I feel reasonably safe in assuming they'll publish a Flights API along with that. Some nice apps could be built on that in conjunction with voice-search.

Thank god for that

[JohnnyUK]

I'm glad. Airline websites have had forever to get this right and yet, for me, one of the most frustrating things to do on the internet is find a flight in any sensible fashion.

Lisp

[White Flame]

ITA's core technology is written in Lisp. It's nice to see more real-world success stories like this, and that using a less popular language for the core IP doesn't prevent sale of a software company.

Re:But you'll still only be able to find southwest

[Mortlath]

I have a daughter with a peanut allergy you insensitive clod!

But seriously, since Southwest doesn't clean up between flights (only once in the morning), we can no longer take Southwest anymore. Even if they ban peanuts on our flight, there is too much old peanuts on the seats, floor, and air. Last time my daughter started getting a bad reaction and we had to douse her with medicine to keep it from getting life-threatening.

People don't realize that just a little bit of peanuts around can cause those with allegeries to stop breathing.

ITA? Never heard of it

[CaptainOfSpray]

>It will control the leading software for powering online airline reservations

Anybody ever heard of Galileo? Amadeus anyone?


Is this ITA something that is only used in the US? BTW, whatever happened to SABRE?

Re:ITA? Never heard of it

[Anonymous Coward]

ITA is to Sabre as Google is to index cards.

One of the founders of ITA examined the rules published by the central authority through which all airlines publish their flight availability data. The ITA founder proved those rules make problems that are NP-complete. He used ITA's search engine to implement a Turing machine using only the rules as defined by the central authority. He used that Turing machine to perform other calculations, all centered around proving certain properties of the data structures defined by the rules. There is a deep art around what ITA does. Sabre was built years ago before anyone suspected that the base of data being searched was anywhere close to as complex as ITA proved it to be. Once ITA understood the true nature of the problem they were trying to solve, they built an engine optimized to search the space. The difference between ITA's results and Sabre's results are .. like Google compared to someone searching index cards.

ITA is the search engine behind Orbitz, Kayak (I believe and am not going to double check), and several other top search engines. ITA doesn't sell tickets, ITA provides data to people who sell tickets.

Re:ITA? Never heard of it

[bunyip]

I think ITA made a great deal of hype around their NP proof, but the complexity of the search was known by many and was known before ITA published their results. For example, Tom Holloran (United Airlines) published a paper at AGIFORS in the 1980's that showed the equivalence to a set covering / set partitioning problem.

Sabre's fare search engine was rewritten from scratch in C++ & Java starting about the same time ITA started. The search engine runs on a Linux cluster, and independent benchmarks show that it is the leader in finding the lowest fares. In fact, pretty much *all* the major players in fare search run on x86 clusters. You could look this up online too :-)