Google acquires ITA Software
googleblog.blogspot.com
googleblog.blogspot.com
In brief:
- Google will be required to license QPX software to airfare websites on commercially reasonable terms.
- Google will be required to continue to fund research and develop the product “at least” at similar levels to what ITA had invested.
- Google will be required to develop and offer ITA’s InstaSearch product to other travel websites.
And even has an interview with ITA's original programming genius, Carl de Marken
I've never found anything as useful or flexible for searching airline data.
And now they will be the Google of the Google of airline data.
The computations are the hard part.
As for getting processed data, that's called metasearch: scraping other sites' search engines. Kayak started out as pure metasearch, but moved to using ITA. Not sure whether they still do any scraping.
http://www.thoughtsonconsumerweb.com/why-google-needs-to-bui...
1) Bing has stopped investing in travel tech, they now use Kayak for search. So do we still believe in the value prop?
2) Farecast (fare predictor) turns out to be not very valuable. So much so, that Bing couldn't even sustain development of their own search tool. Can Google do a better job of it? Maybe. Can they do a good enough job of if that it's ROI positive? I'm skeptical.
I agree that Google believes many of your assertions. I don't agree that this makes it true. Do people really need more sophisticated travel search functionality? Sure, you can imagine lots of cool stuff -- bells and whistles. But ask Kayak if their "Explore" feature (perhaps a lite version of what you can imagine Google doing with ITA) drives their business? I'd argue it's neat, good for branding and loyalty, but not at the end of the day, a major source of value.
That being said -- the key thesis of: Google trying to hold onto relevance in travel search -- is true. However, they are still pretty much a one-horse show (search revenue), and travel is one of (if not the) biggest vertical today.
I didn't know Bing was using Kayak now, and Farecast has been quite useful for me (fairly accurate) in the past.
The thing to understand is that the airlines publish data that ITA uses. The problem is that it takes an incredible amount of engineering effort and algorithm smarts to go from 'published airline data' to 'this is the cheapest flight from BOS to LAX on 4/20'. ITA does have competitors; historically those competitors offered much lower quality products, although that might have changed.
One of the ITA co-founders wrote a presentation on some of these topics at http://www.demarcken.org/carl/papers/ITA-software-travel-com...
http://www.demarcken.org/carl/papers/ITA-software-travel-com...
People think the problem is a graph search problem of finding the shortest path. But that's actually the easiest part of the problem. It turns out that prices aren't attached to individual flights, but rather are rules of the form "If the passenger goes from A to B on a Tuesday, the price is X, and it doesn't really matter what flights they take, as long as the total distance is less than 3 times the line of sight distance."
Then there are all sorts of rules about what fares can be combined with other fares, under which conditions, ...
I worked at ITA software on QPX, and their code is by far the most algorithmically complex code I've ever seen. As I mentioned, there are many, many sub problems, and each one is a tricky algorithm design problem.
How cool would it be to receive suggestions for flights in May with clusters in my social graph as destinations?
Has been covered a few times on HN already e.g. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1651737
I quit Twitter instead so that I wouldn't have to hurt anyone's feelings anymore.
I just have a launch page up right now: http://flybymiles.com - but private beta coming next week.
In the meantime check out http://wanderfly.com - they could use a much better recommendation engine, but the content is there (ie: beach for $500)
It's not like Google has never failed at any of its ventures, but to me it seems like it might be a tough competitor to everyone in this field, since a decent amount of traffic does come through search results. On the other hand, I think a majority of users come in directly, either through WOM or advertising or previous use.
So, what is HN's thoughts on the situation for Kayak? Would it be a wrong move to accept a job there? The engineers seem smart, the work is interesting, the culture is sane and easygoing. What's the worst that could happen?
So in summary: Worst scenario is pretty darn good for you!
I believe the consent decree was reported to say that ITA has to renew existing contracts until at least 2016. So that's 5 years before Kayak might, theoretically, lose access to QPX. Don't worry about it; 5 years of a good job is a good run.
The only thing special about ITA is their excellent software. Apparently they get their raw data from another company that is willing to license the data to anyone. I am sure that there are still some old LISPers around that can write a similar software for a new company.
This is not true. In order to do what ITA does, you need schedules, fares, and availability data. You can buy the first two from clearinghouses if you have enough money. But the only way to get availability data is to either contract with airlines directly OR contract with your competitors.
I am sure that there are still some old LISPers around that can write a similar software for a new company.
That is just breathtakingly wrong.
Before you say something is breathtakingly wrong you should read it carefully and try to understand it. This way you might also get some of the jokes that are currently flying over your head.
The bit that is breathtakingly wrong is the notion that you can just take some smart lisper, lock them in a room, and have them replicate what ITA did and have that be a viable business. See martincmartin's and my comments later in this thread to learn why that would be incredibly hard. With a smart enough team and enough time and money, you could certainly do it, but this is a project that would take many years and its unlikely anyone would be able to keep funding for that long. ITA had a much easier job: it was competing with very poorly designed systems that ran on mainframes and had very little CPU power available.
http://www.itasoftware.com/news-events/press-release.html?id.... Note that the round included Sequoia who are known for caring only about big markets.
From what I hear it worked technically, but failed commercially due to the badly timed recession. It seems like a fair bet that Google's offer wasn't putting a lot of value on the reservation system. Even if it could be made to work, it's not the kind of a business that Google is usually in.
First they're doing Youtube Live -> Justin.tv etc.
Then better flight search -> Hipmunk
Oh jeez. I love the future.
In the Google announcement, they say that ITA’s existing contracts will be honored & have extended contracts through to 2016
This deal was announced a long time ago. Hipmunk will have already planned for this situation
Further, if I were doing a talent acquisition, I can't think of many people I'd want more than the reddit team, and Hipmunk is currently pretty much made up of the early reddit team. Of course, Steve is already rich (by some definition of rich), so probably isn't desperate to sell for merely "talent acquisition" money, but Google can afford to stretch the meaning of talent acquisition, and have done so in the past to get really interesting people.
Also, saying "all they need is a GUI" is vastly underrating the importance of the GUI. I can imagine an Android app with a Hipmunk style UI being really powerful. Sometimes you want to find the perfect balance of price and schedule, and sometimes you want to do that while in the middle of a meeting or in the cab on your way to your hotel so you know when you're flying again, or whatever.
And, to get specific about YC-related acquisitions, Google docs had a spreadsheet when they acquired Zenter. All they needed was a GUI, but they acquired a two-man company that had a few tens of thousands of lines of code. Probably a talent acquisition (and a smart one, since Robby and Wayne are awesome), but nonetheless, an acquisition.
Anyway, I agree that Google will definitely be building this into the search user interface. But, when Google moves into an area they don't just do the search interface. Maps has loads of entry-points into it, including non-search oriented use cases, and Google made several acquisitions and developed a bunch of stuff internally to make Maps happen.
Google is not known for revolutionary UI.