_A Monitor Report
New York : Google has marked its entry into the travel search market by buying the aggregator ITA Soft-ware for US$700m. The cash deal, which represents the six-largest in Google's history, will position the technology giant against the likes of Expedia, Cheap-flights, Kayak.com and Microsoft's Bing Travel.
Although an unknown name to the public, ITA is an important player, providing behind-the-scenes data on flight times, availability and pricing to travel agencies and online reservation systems, which are then used as part of customer-facing sales tools.
Google's Chief Executive, Eric Schmidt, said: "Their technology opens exciting possibilities for us to create new ways for users to more easily find flight information online, and we're looking forward to welcoming them to Google."
A consortium of rivals including Microsoft, Kayak, Expe-dia, and Travelport attempted to buy ITA earlier this year as they all rely on its data and wanted to keep the company out of Google's hands.
ITA provides software that organises fares, flight and journey times that are used by airlines, travel agents and flight comparison sites such as Orbitz.
Google said it may well expand the scope, enabling users to search directly for flight destinations.
Google paid US$700m in cash for the US-based company, founded in 1996 by a team of MIT computer scientists.
"What we're going to do is build new flight search tools that focus on end users," said Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt.
However, he said that the firm would not be selling airline tickets to consumers and that it would honour "all existing agreements that ITA has with its partners".
Those partners include some of Google's direct competitors_ such as Microsoft's own flight comparison website, Bing Travel.
Other firms which had been bidding for ITA included Travelport, Expedia and Kayak, many of which are also dependent on ITA for their flight data.
A spokesman for Kayak said that, for now, they were not concerned. "In the short term, it's not an issue, because Google said it's honouring existing agreements," he said.
However, there are fears within the travel industry that Google could have an excessive influence. Google says the acquisition is "procompetitive" and "proconsumer" but said regulators were likely to examine the deal.
"I would expect that it would be a significant review," said Schmidt.
The Independent's travel editor, Simon Calder, said that the biggest loser may be the old legacy booking systems, should Google expand ITA's remit.
