Google Launches Flight Search | Hacker News Reader

Google Launches Flight Search

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55 pointsgalois1734 comments

Wow, I got a totally unexpected feeling of joy of getting immediate, concise results from a flight search instead of the usual drag of navigating through 3 - 4 screens and getting long waits, pestered with ads, special offers, etc. If Google can link this to actual bookings then they are on to something huge, especially if they tie it into their other services (think - book flight, have it appear in your calendar with maps in the entry etc.). More or less like TripIt but more integrated and convenient.

> Wow, I got a totally unexpected feeling of joy of getting immediate, concise results from a flight search instead of the usual drag of navigating through 3 - 4 screens and getting long waits, pestered with ads, special offers, etc.

Had you never tried hipmunk before this?

There's also http://www.skyscanner.net, which does not seem to get much love around here, even though it was doing flight search well before hipmunk even got started.

It's especially good if you want to do an open-ended search, as in you know where you are leaving from and which month you might want to leave, but you're flexible as to where you want to go.

more warning for anyone in a lucrative space on the web...Google will eventually come for you.

It happened to mortgage rates companies, it happened to flights, and eventually given enough it'll happen to any service that acts as a broker/affiliate for other companies.

Anyone in a large scale lucrative space, anyway. And one that can be boiled down to a single search. There's plenty of lucre remaining in travel planning and mortgages.

Google will eventually come for you.

Or buy you. The trick is to be so good at what you do that it's easier for Google to fork out cash than engineering resources.

Not everyone wants to be bought, though, and those that don't shouldn't be at a disadvantage due to Google's position as the gatekeeper of web traffic instantly benefitting their own stuff over the incumbents.

This is what antitrust laws are for.

Warning to anyone in any lucrative market, you will have competition.

no this is different...with your competition you are more or less on a level playing field. With Google, they get to always place their stuff before you.

which means on the back end much lower traffic for the companies, which in turn drives down the rates you can charge for the leads.

Search engine traffic isn't the only source of publicity. Google Flight Search isn't going to be first in a search for 'hipmunk', nor anywhere on the first page.

A competition is a competition. While Google definitely has the leverage of it's name, it also has pressure to produce which freelance entrepreneurs do not. Ultimately I think good execution is all that matters... the Google brand will attract somebody to the product, but it won't make them use it.

I still think that hipmunk (http://www.hipmunk.com/) does a better job.

Hipmunk only shows the flights that have tickets to sell through their partners.

Google has a lot more in terms of schedules.

Aye, mostly true. But Google doesn't tell you anything about whether the fares are available at all, or what they would cost—it's possible a flight's sold out or prohibitively expensive.

They also don't have mascot, or hotel search ;)

I'll leave it there.

I'm not seeing flight information in my Google search results. Anybody else?

I see it. I tried this: flights from nyc to seattle

All I see is schedules of direct flights, making it orders of magnitude less useful than, say, hipmunk.

If it could plot non-nonstop routes and quote me prices for specific days, then it'd be really disruptive. But as it is, if I want to go somewhere surely I'll take the extra few seconds to check a proper travel site?

Did you RTFA? Google's made a recent major acquisition in this field that will give them access to the data you mention, but they haven't had a chance to use it yet; this is a very preliminary product.

just search "SFO to NYC"

Yeah, I searched "JFK to BUD", which is what interests me. If it's just domestic flights, then wake me when they do something interesting.

Seems to work only with US to US flights. "LGA to ORD" works, "FRA to SIN" and "HAM to TXL" don't.

Works for international flights with one end in the US. (SFO to LHR, SFO to SYD I've tried...)

Hm. JFK-FRA works, JFK-SIN doesn't. SFO-(AKL|SIN|BKK|BJS) don't, JFK-WAW doesn't, DEN-MEX doesn't, JFK-YYZ doesn't. So, US-US, US-Western Europe, US-Australia. Strange dataset.

Well it only has nonstop flights, so JFK-SIN shouldn't work (afaik no aircraft has that range). Likewise SFO-SIN, SFO-BKK.

SFO-AKL has direct flights though. I know, I've done it. NZ8. Nice plane.

edit: Actually I checked and "sfo to akl" does in fact give me results.

And I'm just coming back to this thread because I learned something today. There are no flights from Singapore to JFK, but there is one to Newark. It's the longest scheduled air route in the world, at 18 hours and 40 minutes.

Oh, and it's in a 100-seat all-business-class A340-500. I'm guessing they couldn't do it with a fully-laden economy section. Then again I'd hate to fly 19 hours nonstop in economy.

Actually, it's now working for all flights into Budapest (including from Europe). Looks like they're shooting for the whole ball of wax.

Flights from an airport: http://www.google.com/search?q=flights+from+SFO

Flights to an airport http://www.google.com/search?q=flights+to+SFO

Change SFO to airport code of your choice.

That was freaking weird. They didn't show up until just now. Maybe there's some kind of rollout effect or something.

Yes, something like this is nice. I just wish someone else besides Google did it. Google is way too big. I'd much rather have a majority of the internet comprised of many small companies than several internet giants. It's much healthier..

I suddenly have the feeling this is just opened the doors to something MASSIVE in the travel startup niche.

Includes Southwest Airlines flights!

And low cost in Europe (e.g. Easyjet) which aren't usually aggregated in flight search.

Asked Marisa Mayer today: so when can I sort by price and buy direct via google checkout? No reply to date. Anyone else know / speculate?

I wish Amazon would do this as well. I want 1 click flights, and something that almost all these booking sites lack... awesome customer service. These are 2 things Amazon can do well.

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