Google on its way to control most online travel purchases?
January 11, 2012 | Online Travel
OTAs want to sell their tickets through Google Flight Search. Discussions are "ongoing," yet no agreements have been reached. Google describes these discussions as a good-faith dialogue, but some think that OTAs aren't a part of Google's business plan and will never be included.
Think this has no bearing on how you travel? If only.
This little squabble is a sign of a much bigger challenge down the road -- one that led Google's farsighted rivals to fight hard, but unsuccessfully, to block Google's ITA purchase.
The problem isn't the Flight Search of today, an emerging competitor to the big three online agencies. It's what Flight Search could be in a year or two.
We live in a Google world. Google holds more than a 70 percent market share among online search engines. Gmail is one of the most popular e-mail services and certainly the easiest to use. Sites such as YouTube and AdSense don't have any meaningful competition.
To suggest that Google isn't in travel to do anything less than dominate in the same way would be naive.
Get the full story at the Chicago Tribune
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