Google Acquires ITA Software, Regulators May Balk 72
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."
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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 d
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Where's the -1 Blasphemer mod when I need it?
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They're not people, nor are they moral actors, meaning there is no real good/evil associated with the company.
No [wikipedia.org] evil [wikipedia.org] associated [wikipedia.org] with [wikipedia.org] a company [wikipedia.org]?
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Looks like a lot of people agree [google.com] with you.
eff the regulators... (Score:2)
Just set up a seperate corporation and operate it in a clandestine manner...
Nothing to see here folks, just 'ethical' modern business practices
Why travel? (Score:5, Funny)
With google earth and street view I don't actually need to leave the basement any more.
I am (Score:1, Interesting)
getting sick of Google EVERYWHERE.
Where is the FTC. Ooooops, I forgot. It's an oligarchy.
Yours In Krasnoyarsk,
Kilgore Trout
One of ITA's Customers is Bing (Score:5, Funny)
Re:One of ITA's Customers is Bing (Score:4, Interesting)
This is awesome. (Score:1)
Google Maps (Score:5, Insightful)
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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 optio
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To be honest, this would be pretty sweet.
Sort by:
* fastest
* cheapest
* shortest
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I just hope they keep the option to "Swim Across the Atlantic Ocean". My commute isn't complete until I swim 3462 miles.
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if i remember right they got rid of that a few weeks ago after a lady sued them for telling her to walk down the middle of a highway while following the walk line on her crackberry and was hit by a car.
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Nope, walking directions from my house to the Sydney Opera House includes:
218. Kayak across the Pacific Ocean (Entering Japan)
No wonder it's estimated at 184 days!
API (Score:3, Interesting)
But you'll still only be able to find southwest... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:But you'll still only be able to find southwest (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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Free peanuts and a soda? Meh. How about an assigned seat?
I personally _love_ to stand 40 minutes to an hour prior to my flights just so I can get a decent seat. I mean what else would I be doing, trolling slashdot? Sheesh.
Cattle call!
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You're referring to a system they stopped using a few years ago. Now, they give you a number based on when you check in online (you can also get a low number by flying alot, or paying extra), and you board in that order. You can remain seated right until they board the block of numbers that includes yours. You don't really *need* to be at your computer exactly 24 hours before your flight to check in
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How the hell does one "check in" without being.. well.. in.
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and yet... southwest is an ITA customer, for the functionality on their own site (and possibly other authorized sales channels) though they still don't allow their fares to be used for cross-shopping search.
(former ITA employee who is currently wondering what his shares would be worth right now)
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still give you a free bag of peanuts and a free soda.
Except last time I flew them peanuts were banned from being passed out on the flight because someone had an allergy. They also scolded people who opened peanuts from previous flights or had brought their own...
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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 wi
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we have guys flying all the time - and most of them will only fly southwest.. one of the guys would rather, and does, drive 8 hours to a client rather than fly american (the only option for that client's city)
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It's not that ITA doesn't search all airlines, it's that Southwest's agreements with ITA don't allow for cross-carrier comparisons.
Intriguingly, Southwest uses ITA behind the scenes for their flight searches, so you're still giving us money for the $88 flight. :-)
But corporate travel... (Score:4, Interesting)
"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.
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I don't think google WANTS to handle that process. That's not really what they do. They probably just want you to be able to type in a city and links for flights to that city from where you're at will show up in the search results, complete with prices, along with the news, shopping, ads and youtube results, as well as the regular search results. They just want to do the searching. The financial transaction can be handled by someone else.
-Restil
Try it out (Score:5, Informative)
You can use the ITA engine at http://matrix.itasoftware.com/cvg/dispatch [itasoftware.com] and it is really quite good compared to most airline/agency websites. However, it won't actually sell you a ticket.
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Thank god for that (Score:3, Interesting)
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yep, was just talking with a friend the other day about how irritating it is trying to find decent flight info, and how google should clean up the competition.
At least it's the right company taking over (Score:2)
700 Million? (Score:2)
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more than the government? no
a lot of money? yes
Google has some where between 10-20 billion
MS is ~40 billion
and Apple is catching up with MS.
US government spends ~4.1 billion per DAY above what they earn.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Debt_Clock [wikipedia.org]
US government spends ~255 million per day for the war in Iraq
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15377059/ [msn.com]
isn't it fun.. i think instead of paying my 40k i'm liable for - i'll wait till China comes for it and pay them in lead..
Lisp (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
ITA? Never heard of it (Score:4, Interesting)
Anybody ever heard of Galileo? Amadeus anyone?
Is this ITA something that is only used in the US? BTW, whatever happened to SABRE?
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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 defi
Re:ITA? Never heard of it (Score:4, Informative)
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 :-)
Monopoly of monopolies (Score:1)
Less gov't is best! Where do I get my G-Chip? (Score:2)
Then on the other side we have "So, n
What's with the blatant LYING in the post??! (Score:2)
"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. "
Bullshit! They say the exact opposite:
http://www.google.com/press/ita/faq.html [google.com]
"It's also 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. "
They are a search company, they have noticed a lot of people are searching for flights - so they are prepared
Bing has a useful Travel Search (Score:1)
I know it's not a fashionable thing to say in these parts - but I love Google products. I was happy to hear about this acqui
I am happy about this (Score:2)
Google made the transit info in my city usable. The previous system written by the local transit authority was a usability and performance nightmare.
Shopping for flights and hotels online is currently a godawful mess of bad user experience,
including ridiculously useless middlemen (highwaymen) hijacking your searches.
I once went through a 6, 7 or 8 page form sequence to search for and order an airline ticket (departing from my home city) before it told me obliquely that "you can't do that from your country".