The Gmail bug that’s been stealing $187M a year from Expedia

thehftguy.com

4 pointstowaway11382 comments

It's only theft if the money winds up someplace else. Expedia's competitors don't count.

"The first Googler who fixes it can genuinely claim to add billions of dollars of value to the internet." If by "the internet," he means Expedia, then I suppose I agree.

Yeah, "theft" is the wrong word to use, and this is basically Expedia's bag of crap.

The larger story is correct, though. Companies leave a lot of money on the table by not looking for basic problems with their websites, apps, and other similar systems.

I regularly move away from (or never even start with) businesses that have these sorts of problems. It could be that in all of these cases I'm a unicorn, and no one else is having trouble, but I doubt it.

(I once thought of starting a consultancy that would simply examine websites for issues like this. I realized quickly that businesses simply wouldn't pay for such a service.)

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