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Comment by jptman | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure I'd call it "failed commercially at solving booking". Google stopped their work on creating a booking system after the acquisition since they were never interested in getting into booking.

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They had one small airline (Cape Air) using it for a long time, so I don't quite get your point. It was built, but almost nobody bought it. Google did squash it roughly 2 years after buying ITA, but it was pretty much dead anyway.

I have to admit I don't know this stuff first hand, but based on what I heard, it took quite a while for ITA to be fully "absorbed" into Google, during which time they didn't change much. I also heard that their first customer was more of a pilot or development partner. Also, from what I know about the airline industry, they change very very slowly and it'd take a long time from the time airlines are approached to the time things are actually in production, especially for something this critical.

That's fair. I'm not trying to portray ITA as a failure. Quite the opposite. Trying to say even an elite group of genius talent can't turn the ship quickly. That it's more about legacy thinking than it is about legacy tech.

Airlines and OTA companies could be 10x more innovative with the tech they have now. TPF and other old tech is NOT the barrier.

Which acquisition was this?

Google/ITA. https://www.google.com/press/ita/faq.html

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