4 ms·
I'd be very surprised if Google Flights wanted Southwest to pay for inclusion. It already lists Southwest flights with a note "Prices are not available for: So
by cbr 10y ago
I'd be very surprised if Google Flights wanted Southwest to pay for inclusion. It already lists Southwest flights with a note "Prices are not available for: Southwest. Flights with unknown prices are at the end of the list." Instead it really sounds like it's Southwest not wanting it to be easy for people to comparison shop.
(Disclaimer: I work for Google, on an unrelated project.)
- Quinner 10y agoGoogle hooks into the systems that want Southwest to pay, it's not directly making that decision.
- cbr 10y agoEven then, though, I'd still be very surprised if Google would respond to an offer of seat availability data from Southwest with "sorry, we won't let people search it unless you pay us".
- geverett 10y agoGoogle works with a few airlines that don't pay them anything. However, Southwest (probably rightly) thinks that if people get used to finding Southwest fares on Google, they'll visit Southwest.com less frequently, increasing Southwest's reliance on Google in the long term. I'm nearly certain Southwest has sent a specific cease and desist to Google to NOT include its fares in results.
- cbr 10y agoYes, Southwest asking Google not to include their fares in results seems likely to me. (This thread started with me arguing that "it costs money to be there" was not the reason Southwest flight prices aren't in Google.)
- massysett 10y agoIsn't Google sending customers directly to airline websites to book? So the way this is working is: Google, Hipmunk, etc. use GDS for queries, and then send customer to airline to book? Does GDS have any ability to sell tickets? Has Google tried to scrape data directly from Southwest website and Southwest won't let them? Or is it just that Southwest will not provide APIs to make it easy for Google to pull the data?