With ITA Google doesn't just get a database, ITA's QPX system does much more than that. It could be thought of as a variation of real-time search--ITA gets fare updates thoughout the day (4 times a day, if I remember correctly). ITA has been working on making their fare search engine more general purpose, and I don't think it's a stretch to think of it as another way to improve Google's real-time search capabilities outside of the travel area.
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With ITA Google doesn't just get a database, ITA's QPX system does much more than that. It could be thought of as a variation of real-time search--ITA gets fare updates thoughout the day (4 times a day, if I remember correctly). ITA has been working on making their fare search engine more general purpose, and I don't think it's a stretch to think of it as another way to improve Google's real-time search capabilities outside of the travel area.
One of the hundreds of side stories in Pynchon's last book is about the mysterious explosion. http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index. php?title=ATD_768-791#Page_779
If the Chums of Chance swing by here again soon they can tell us all about it.
Larry Brilliant? Wasn't he a character in a Pynchon novel?
There's a good survey of information retrieval techniques & algorithms here -h tml
http://maya.cs.depaul.edu/~classes/ds575/lecture.
It's a course site so the lectures not accessible, but all the articles & tools are.