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this doesn't make a ton of sense. A (majority?) good share of ITA's profits are from sales to other traffic search sites and directly to airlines. Google's ne
by robk 17y ago
this doesn't make a ton of sense. A (majority?) good share of ITA's profits are from sales to other traffic search sites and directly to airlines. Google's never had a strength in selling to other enterprises and surely doesn't want to manage yet another enterprise software sales team. I find it unlikely this purchase would go through given they'd be paying for the enterprise software portion when they only want the consumer engine portion.
- hga 17y agoI partly agree, Google's operations just aren't of high enough quality in terms of uptime for the QPX market. It's one thing to be shut out of Gmail for a half hour, quite another to not be able to book tickets for any long period of time. This acquisition only makes sense if the QPX operations parts of ITA stay separate from Google; in general, Google would have to avoid "Googlizing" operations and probably the working code base as well. QRES, though, isn't as far as we know isn't in good shape WRT to its potential market due to the Great Recession and now the Iceland volcano and its one customer (Air Canada) suspended its formal involvement in it (now's just not a good time to make a switch). I wouldn't be surprised if that got spun off or more likely canceled. I'm assuming ITA's leaders are shopping around the company or at least entertaining offers due to it's poor prospects for the foreseeable future, it's a very good idea with very bad timing.