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Google putting the finishing touches om the ITA software acquisition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITA_Software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITA_Software Bu
by acomjean 7y ago
Google putting the finishing touches om the ITA software acquisition.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITA_Software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITA_Software
But oddly closed google trips, which frankly was decent. Google sometimes seems like incoherent.
- minimaxir 7y agoDuring my business/tech econonomics class in college in 2010, one of the main course assignments was to argue for or against the ITA acquisition from a judicial perspective (i.e. would it create a monopoly). No one in the class could really argue against it because as far as monopolies that Google could possibly create, that's pretty minor. A decade later, almost everyone seems to have forgotten that Google did it.
- bitL 7y agoWhat is Hipmunk using underneath?
- jmathai 7y agoI believe they all use several of the services. I worked at one of the airline booking sites and know they used Sabre and ITA as well as others. https://beta.developer.sabre.com/guides https://beta.developer.sabre.com/guides
- kortilla 7y ago>No one in the class could really argue against it because as far as monopolies that Google could possibly create, that's pretty minor. That’s really goofy reasoning. Just because google is huge and could do much more evil doesn’t mean that a small amount of evil (destroying the airline itinerary quote market) is ok. Is that what you meant to say?
- londons_explore 7y agoThe airline industry quote market is very much not dead though.... Skyscanner, kayak, etc...
- dewey 7y agoDo you know what they are using under the hood?
- londons_explore 7y agoI think most of them either still use old versions of ITA software (it was sold like traditional software, not an ongoing license), or they're rolling their own.
- fatfox 7y agoHere’s an interesting podcast ep about flight data: https://www.kassenzone.de/2019/08/04/wer-gewinnt-bei-flugsuchen-mathias-hedlund-ceo-etraveli/ https://www.kassenzone.de/2019/08/04/wer-gewinnt-bei-flugsuc... Intro text is German, audio and transcription are English
- dewey 7y agoThanks, that sounds very interesting - will check it out!
- toper-centage 7y agoGoogle is so incoherent all the time that at this point it's the norm. Most projects are meant to last a couple years at best and then get shunned even if they had millions of users.
- londons_explore 7y agoPeople get promoted in Google for designing a new amazing service and having a bunch of people use it. Nobody gets promoted for maintaining a service. So old services die because nobody wants to look after them. That won't change till Google reworks its employee incentives.
- privateSFacct 7y agoI liked google trips and finance, light weight to the point. Not sure what happened to either of them, maybe just less discoverable these days.
- thepangolino 7y agoGoogle Finance has turned into some sort of monstrosity all in the name of “engagement”.
- micael_dias 7y agoGoogle trips shutdown on the 5th of August
- ehsankia 7y agoI've been using Google flights and trips features for years and never had the Trips app. I am using it right now, for my current trip. The data propagates through assistant and maps and so on. I got an automatic notification about my flight delay and I can see my hotel reservation right on maps. The Trips app may have been nice for having it all in one place, but it definitely wasn't a necessary part of the experience.
- londons_explore 7y agoI like it as a user, but I really think it's Google applying a "data monopoly" to my life. The fact I use Gmail allows them to make Google maps and Google assistant better products than say bing maps and Cortana, because bing maps and Cortana could never get access to those reservation emails which make the whole thing work. Such monopolies should be illegal - everything should be sharable via an API. Sadly those seem to have gone out of fashion with things like Cambridge Analytica.
- ehsankia 7y agoCould a Gmail add-on not do something similar? Of course you'd need to give it access to your emails. You could also use outlook, which I'm sure does similar things, maybe not as well though.
- londons_explore 7y agoGmail add-ons pretty much don't exist anymore. The Gmail API has been locked down to people able to pay for a ~$100k security audit. The Facebook API is rather crippled too. API's used to let you share all your data, and act on your behalf, but now typically they do Auth and access already-public data.
- mav3rick 7y agoI'm happy it's locked down. I don't want crappy apps accessing my emails
- nihonde 7y agoSome of Google’s biggest ad customers are OTAs. That explains a lot about their moves (or failure to move) in the travel space.