Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Google to launch travel meta-search in April according to unsubstantiated rumour

I heard an unsubstantiated rumour today. Someone told me something they heard from someone else that may know something. The rumour is that Google will be launching a travel meta-search product in the US next month (April). Now, let me say up front that this is nothing but rumour and I have not vetted it to anywhere near the levels of confirmation that a journalist would (may Kevin forgive me). Thought this would be a good chance to test out the power of the blog audience. Have any of you out there in blog land heard anything about Google going into travel meta-search in the coming weeks? Bing's doing it, maybe everybody should.

thanks to "This is a wake up call" for the great photo via flickr
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11 comments:

  1. samdaams16 March 2010 at 11:36 pm

    I'm pretty sure Google flat out denied it last week at Phocuswright at ITB. Then again, Google has a long history of saying one thing and doing something else shortly after... :)

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  2. Tim Hughes17 March 2010 at 9:15 am

    @samdaams - that would be consistent with Rob Torres flat out denial at PhoCuWright in Orlando about re-doing Froogle or equivalent.

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  3. Steve Sherlock17 March 2010 at 10:11 am

    actually i got a call from Larry...............

    though would be interesting to see what they'd come up with. likely pretty innovative.

    maybe apple should have a go too!

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  4. Anonymous17 March 2010 at 10:37 am

    I called on of my contacts at a major US hotel chain and they confirmed that they are under a Non disclosure agreement with Google and could not elaborate........which was their way of confirming that Google is up to something. They also made a reference to Google's recent development of a mortgage comparison service https://www.google.com/comparisonads/mortgages#ti=0

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  5. Anonymous17 March 2010 at 12:52 pm

    Seems real this time; my sources (reliable) say launch confirmed for April - at least one major OTA in at the start along with some major airlines & chains. There's been discussions with a large GDS; don't know if anything got signed.

    And it's travel, not just hotels.

    Guess the guy who wrote this might want to revise it

    http://gigaom.com/2010/03/11/kayaks-projected-market-cap-more-than-705m/

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  6. Happy Hotelier17 March 2010 at 10:32 pm

    Are we sure they are launching this the first of next month?

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  7. Paul Fisher18 March 2010 at 11:50 am

    I guess it would make sense. After all, metasearch is, well, search. Google have made it clear that they're going deeper into search. And let's face it, they certainly know a thing or two about the CPC/CPA game.

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  8. Unknown18 March 2010 at 12:32 pm

    And their biggest global competitor ie Bing already has travel meta-search

    Google has already got a mortgages vertical:

    https://www.google.com/comparisonads/mortgages#ti=6

    Most interesting question is where any Google meta-search offering will sit in the organic results. Can't immediately see it for the mortgages product.

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  9. Paul Fisher23 March 2010 at 1:17 pm

    Perhaps this is what it was all about:
    RT @mashable: Google Testing Hotel Prices in Google Maps - http://bit.ly/aiisxx

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  10. Tim Hughes24 March 2010 at 9:00 am

    @HH, @martin and @Paul - thanks for comments and links. Though there are still few facts behind this rumour, I am feeling that it is a real chance of being true.

    Either way it is a good story - got my first TechCrunch link out of it

    http://bit.ly/cg1SDk

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  11. Paul Fisher21 April 2010 at 5:07 pm

    More fuel to this story. Google to buy travel distribution company ITA Software? That would put the cat amongst the travel metasearch pidgeons: http://bit.ly/9UWMdu

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