Odd because Bing bought Farecast a few years ago and Kayak is Farecast's biggest competitor
It sounds to me like they're reallocating engineering resources: "For Bing, this means we can focus our development resources on delivering even more unique and valuable features for customers. In essence, this lets us do more for our customers as we continue to invest in next-generation travel experiences."
Aside from acquiring Farecast and copying Kayak's UI, what travel features has Bing developed? Seems wiser to let the Kayak team do this work, as they are really good at it.
(I'm unsure whether Bing is acquiring Kayak wholesale or if they're just sourcing their flight data from them.)
Why odd? They got farecast and now they are getting data from kayak to surface in bing travel. Looks more like a consolidation to me. With GOOG buying ITA, they better cover their asses.