Google Flight Search
google.com
google.com
http://www.google.com/flights/#search;f=LAX,SFO,SEA,LAS,DEN;...
And the results still come back immediately! Including the three-month chart of prices. This leads me to believe that Google/ITA has precomputed all of these results, and is simply serving these results out of a cache of some sort. That would explain why they are only offering a limited set of origin airports at this time: it probably takes an incredible amount of computing power and storage space to pre-calculate all of the possible results.
Colour me impressed.
Thing that gets me is, do they really send their employees SFO to LA on United?! Southwest's like a third the price... And why isn't SW listed, anyway? Did Herb take issue with something here?
EDIT: This recent news article states "Of the five biggest U.S. airline companies, analysts expected only Southwest to report a first-quarter profit":
http://travel.usatoday.com/flights/story/2011/04/Southwest-m...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines#Risk_managem...
http://www.demarcken.org/carl/papers/ITA-software-travel-com...
I'd love to know how Google's doing it - it's a really hard problem.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Google has a framework called Pregel [2] which does parallel graph processing. Their research paper outlines how it can be used to calculate a single-source shortest path tree (in section 5.2) in reasonable time.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shortest_path_tree
[2] http://www-bd.lip6.fr/ens/grbd2011/extra/SIGMOD10_pregel.pdf
http://www.google.com/flights/#search;f=EWR,JFK,LGA;t=ORD;d=...
gives: Your search – New York to Chicago – did not match any results.
versus
http://www.kayak.com/#flights/NYC-ORD/2011-10-01/2011-11-01
1347 of 1347 roundtrips shown
http://www.google.com/flights/#search;f=LGA;t=MYR;d=2011-09-...
No flights. However:
http://www.google.com/flights/#search;f=LGA;t=ATL;d=2011-09-... http://www.google.com/flights/#search;f=ATL;t=MYR;d=2011-09-...
One of the bits ITA/QPX got really right was smart availability caching (http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/001880.html) -
I would think they can do the fare search/assembly in realtime with their infrastructure, but they're relying on cached availability, hence the limit to "popular US cities" at the moment, to keep caches fresh enough within the practical throughput limits.
And they have this: http://itasoftware.com/pdf/BrochurePDF_DACS.pdf
It doesn't take a tremendous amount of computing power -- remember that most airlines are still running ancient mainframe reservation systems.
The multiple destinations functionality was from ITA -- it's been around for years. Check out flyertalk.com for discussions -- you can input multiple layovers to have it compute cheap fares that maximize miles/segments. They keep a basic backend open at: matrix1.itasoftware.com
What continues to impress me about Google is:
1. Just how quickly this was built (really, it was quick); and
2. Google wants you to use our services because they're compelling not because we don't give you any other choice (ie "Don't be evil").
Sure there are limits to what it currently does but I think you'll see it rapidly iterate.
I don't mean any offense, but the "Don't be evil" mantra is growing a bit tired. Evil is a strong word, and "not being evil" is a pretty low bar, IMO.
(i.e. the agent 'Google' is distinct from the agents that it is composed of)
See https://plus.google.com/100010618263697835406/posts/azTW8hvw... for details.
Ultimately, some policy on some random social networking site nobody uses is not much of a big deal. If you don't like the policy, don't use Google+. Easy.
It sounds less like it was ignored and more like it isn't a priority for a resource stretched team.
If Apple suddenly came out and said "right, from today on we want 75% of your sales instead of 30%" would you have the same reaction?
Google App Engine:
* Not the dominant hosting platform. Not even close to being the dominant.
* Maybe a million dollar product. Certainly not a billion dollar product.
* In beta/preview until just now with developers knowing pricing had not been set or could be changed.
* Optimizing your application properly can negate most if not all of the pricing increase.
* Open source alternative framework available if you want to keep using the same APIs.
Apple App Store:
* Dominant market position with only the Android Market coming close.
* Billion dollar product.
* Existed as fully launched for several years.
* Set percentage. You can't change it other then making your app free.
* No open source alternative that supports the same APIs.
Beta/preview products can and will change.
If profit is the only motivation for decisions at Google, why did it pull out of China? I'm sure you're cynical and wise about that too, but here's what I can tell you. I saw Sergey up on stage saying the same things he said in this interview (http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/22/interview-sergey-br...) and he got fiery and emotional about it. This is a guy who grew up in the Soviet Union until he was 6 and for him it is a very personal and ideological issue.
This corporations-as-profit-seeking-automata meme is old and tired. At the end of the day it's people who make decisions, and just as in every aspect of life people can have complex motivations for the decisions that they make.
I refer you to the comment above by jey
What Google "wants" as an entity is different from what the individual
component humans want.
Not necessarily. To parrot one of the other posters here: saying it doesn't make it true.
You could also argue that being a charity would be a very slow and inefficient means to achieving many of the things Google has set out to do. Being a for-profit corp gets them there faster and with fewer distractions not core to their purpose. I'd even venture to guess that it wouldn't be possible for Google to do what it does as a non-profit.
Sure, profit is a motivation, but it's certainly not the only (or even necessarily primary) motivation.
http://www.paulgraham.com/good.html
"That was a surprising realization. Companies often claim to be benevolent, but it was surprising to realize there were purely benevolent projects that had to be embodied as companies to work."
In any case, the parent doesn't have to justify anything, because he's stating a relatively well-known argument: in the US, there's an obligation for corporate executives to maximize shareholder value. This point is debated (http://www.linkedin.com/answers/law-legal/corporate-law/corp...), but not to the extent that you're claiming.
Do you mean "why did they make a big rant about pulling out of China and then not actually do it until they were literally cyber-attacked by the government"? Google was never all that big in China anyway. I'm sure their whole strategy around this was to get gullible people to buy into the "Don't do evil" nonsense.
>Sergey up on stage saying the same things he said in this interview and he got fiery and emotional about it.
Yea? So do politicians. Very passionate about what they're talking about until it comes time to vote. Then they follow their wallets.
>This is a guy who grew up in the Soviet Union until he was 6 and for him it is a very personal and ideological issue.
I know plenty of people who grew up in the Soviet Union. What exactly do you think goes on there that makes the "lucky few" who escape want to change the world? Maybe it did have some profound effect on him but it sounds more likely to be simple positioning. Getting people to think he really cares will cause them to defend him every time his company betrays that trust.
>This corporations-as-profit-seeking-automata meme is old and tired. At the end of the day it's people who make decisions, and just as in every aspect of life people can have complex motivations for the decisions that they make.
It may well be old and tired but it's how the world works. The only thing a CEO can get in trouble for not doing is increasing share holder value.
You've been conned.
I think the core of Google is Larry, Sergey, Urs, Craig, and the other dozens of engineers I've read about (never met), and from their actions and words over a course of a decade, I think they've proved that a huge motivator for them all is to simple make the world better.
They've all got lots of money. I think the long term evidence shows that they care about doing good. I think their motivation for earning money is to expand their own ability to do good.
If someone disagrees, instead of responding with more argument I'd ask you to make a table and list everything Google done has done in one column and whether or not it seems "good" or "evil" in another. Then we could debate further.
This is relevant to your statement, because while it's pretty much a requirement for a publicly held company to pursue profit at any cost, it's not necessarily the case for a company run by the people that have a disproportionately large number of votes on major issues.
I'm pretty sure they still have over 50% of the votes, so together they can decide how Google will handle tough moral issues without any support from other shareholders.
I would argue that it's entirely plausible that a couple altruistic billionaires will sacrifice a few dollars in pursuit of non-evil (their opinion of non-evil mind you).
"I strongly disagree. Google wants us to use its services because at its core is a bunch of engineers that simply want to make the world better."
I don't doubt that the people working at google want to make the world better and work on cool software. I don't think that is the primary motivation of google as a company.
Are you serious or trolling? I would expect if someone had such an ignorant/naive opinion they would at least be smart enough to not let other people know.
Here's what I see from google:
Search - a product that helps them sell ads
Gmail - a product that helps them sell ads
Google App engine - A platform where they used the hype of MapReduce et al to get people to join and then ramped up pricing drastically after a lot of people had been on the service (a service for which switching away almost certainly means a big rewrite) for years
Android - phone OS to help them sell ads.
I'm not seeing a lot of "make the world better" in there. Unless you mean "for Google executives".
Making money from selling things and leaving the user's data alone is just not in the DNA of this company.
I have always been amazed that some people would consider "don't be evil" to be a motto with any power to motivate or lead people, since it ventures no strong opinion, and points in no clear direction.
"Do good" is far more costly, less likely to be politically correct, and more likely to invite ridicule. At the same time, this kind of heart-on-sleeve sincerity has more power to inspire. Sincerity, humility, innocence tend to achieve more than cynicism and jaded worldly wisdom.
Should one treat others as one would like others to treat oneself? (the positive form)
Should one not treat others in ways that one would not like to be treated? (the negative form)
I consider the maxim “Don't be evil” to be more actionable, useful, and meaningful than “Be good.”
So, uh... in hindsight I guess I'm just agreeing with you :-P
I thought about that in the wrong way.
What I really meant is it's just easier to not do evil. You can look at something and say "that's evil, so I won't do it". Sure, sometimes that can cause you hardship, but you deal with it. Maybe evil is an uncountable, but you don't need to count it. You just passively avoid options that are evil.
Doing good is harder. You have to actively seek out and choose good things to do from a huge set. That means attempting to enumerate at least part of that set. You have to figure out how to actually do those things. As a public corporation, you have to figure out how to do things and spin it as being in the company's best interests.
Weak leaders who don't do evil, but who also fail to do good, or fail to actively advocate and define doing good, are as much part of the problem because they fail in their responsibility of teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in matters of service.
You would only need to "spin it as being in the company's best interests" if the employer truly believes that business on any basis other than service is the most profitable.
In a town in which I expected from experience to encounter a few cockroaches during any visit to any restaurant, I would find that a reasonable, positive, encouraging message to advertise with.
When was the last time Google abused its set of patents to screw competition? There are so many ways in which Google can be evil, but it consciously chooses not to be.
Edit: Grammar
From http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/24/google-settles-phar...
"Investigators snared Google's ad system by creating seven undercover websites offering prescription drugs to be sold without a prescription or the completion of an online medical questionnaire, Martin-Weis said. An undercover investigator informed Google employees creating the advertising for the products that they were manufactured overseas and did not require customers to have a valid prescription, she said. "In each instance, despite this knowledge, Google employees created a full advertising campaign for each of the undercover websites," Martin-Weis said."
What google did here was illegal and it paid the price for it, but I don't see anybody getting directly harmed by google's decision, it was not google selling the drugs themselves or that the drugs were not upto the standards.
Besides by the same reasoning google should block all the illegal torrent sites, or wikileaks for that matter. Always remember your truth is not everybody else's truth, and it is better that the world's leading search engine does not take sides for you.
Clearly Google can do no evil, because everything they do is good in your eyes. Next thing you'll tell me that collecting advertising for child porn, hitmen, or crack is fine too. They don't make moral judgments. Except in China when they're having problems -- then they're suddenly all about morality.
I love all the jerk-wad Google apologists downvoting this. Few companies I can stand less than this self-righteous company and its blind followers.
But, no, it's Google who are the benevolent ones! Why? Well because their motto says so, duh?
Your example of child porn and crack is taking it too far and I am sure no such thing will happen. But if you want google to be enforcing all the laws for you, then maybe it should also detect your location and disallow all merchants catering to gay marriages in the search results, in states where it is prohibited.
Also I don't agree with your generalist approach to corporations that they are all equally evil. I for one would prefer a corporation which makes a bold statement about its policies being non evil and one which is ready to be called upon when it goes astray its path, than one which makes no such claims. To me this is not self righteousness but self discipline.
A centralized database of individual's profiles is a much more dangerous tool. Google's efforts to destroy the idea of online privacy are much more dangerous to society.
And stupid lawsuits are not irrelevant to the society, they hamper competition which in turn hampers technological progress. If you think Samsung Galaxy Tab and Ipad look similar, just look again at their screens side by side the difference between PLS and IPS is day and night, it is unfortunate that the court does not deem that as differentiating enough.
Why is there a giant search bar at the top of the screen? I came here to look for flights, not to search the web.
Why is there a giant map at the top of the screen? I already know where I want to go. I don't need to look at a map to decide which destination I want. This part seems like more of a tech demo than anything.
The whole UI looks like it was designed by an engineer. For example when I want to book the flight, I get a tiny left/right arrow box-thing to increase the passenger count. Very poor choice of UI.
For example, I looked at a ticket from SEA -> SFO. When I zoomed in on SFO, I can easily see how much it is to San Jose or Oakland as well.
It's also just fun to enter your departure airport and see "where can I fly and for how much?"
This will be (if it isn't already) integrated with their search product. In other words, it'll be a part of search. You'll search for "flight from ny to sf" and that's what you'll see. Perfectly natural for them to have a consistent UI in their search product.
> Why is there a giant map at the top of the screen?
It's interactive. Try pulling the marker from one location to another. Very cool. I can also see the exact route that the flight will take. More intuitive.
I may have a general area of where I want to end up, but this lets you choose exactly where through a visual map. Again, very cool.
That's not the exact route the flight will take; it's the quickest (great circle) route. Airliners fly along airways.
I can also see the approximate route the flight will take, with layovers and other planned stops.
For me it just drags the map (Chrome 13.0.782.220 / OS X).
> I may have a general area of where I want to end up, but this lets you choose exactly where through a visual map. Again, very cool.
...is a map really helpful for this? How often do you want to go somewhere but not know the name? I'd rather they take all of that map space and use it for something else. I wouldn't mind something that says "hey, you could save $x on this flight if you went to $nearby_airport instead of the one you're on."
I'm on Chrome 15 (dev), which probably explains it.
> is a map really helpful for this?
I like maps. You never know what you'll notice on one.
Definitely. They could also just overlay that on the map like they do the popular destinations.
As a developer, I just HOPE that one day google takes a service like this and makes a long blog post out of it describing and bisecting every aspect of the app and how it was built. I'm tired of clicking 'view source' and finding nothing but minimized JS
In Chrome 12 you just right click the scripts pane in the developer tools and click "De-obfuscate Source".
In Chrome 13 you navigate to the scripts pane and click the "{}" icon. I honestly have no idea why they got rid of the right click functionality, but it's incredibly useful for me.
Disclaimer: I work for Google and this is how I feel every day :) it's a good feeling though!
Wouldn't this have to be thanks to their relatively recent ITA acquisition? Not too surprised since QPX runs a few popular websites such as Orbitz and Kayak.
(I'm not saying it's not a feat to do it in such little time as any project does take time, but I would like to see credit where due.)
And they also dominate any local keywords. Instead of going to the actual business's website, the first 10 results tend to be Google places.
Google wants to control all information. By being the defacto middle man between all businesses and their customers they are able to carve a large chunk of advertising dollars.
Sorry but not impressed, unless it was done overnight. Nothing special there, just copying from already done sites.
"2. Google wants you to use our services because they're compelling not because we don't give you any other choice (ie "Don't be evil")."
Yeah, that's why they keep filling the first page with in house junk that would NEVER make it without the Google advantage. I am already seeing adsense ads for this all over the web, how much does Google pay the webmasters for them?
A pity it only works within the US so far, but I'm sure they'll add international destinations eventually.
Also a shame that Southwest still won't cooperate with any of these guys. I guess it's a rational decision on their part: be cheapest most of the time and hope that people won't bother to compare your fares to others.
You also have one killer competitive advantage: an adorable logo.
Thanks for a great service.
Why clean clone? Gantt charts are (technically) 115 years old, and it's not like there are 5 billion ways to display a gantt chart, especially one with no paths. Other flight search startup have independently stumbled upon the idea of gantt charts for flight, why could that not be yet another independent reinvention?
> I'm sure it'll be a matter of time before that makes it into google's interface.
Or not, ITA does not seem to have met much success with their matrix so far.
When I say clone, I don't mean to imply they simply copied it with no originality - I'm just pointing out this fact to all the people who claim Hipmunk's advantage is their gantt view..which ITA already has a versin of and can be improved to match or be better than Hipmunk's.
That's what "cloning" implies though: making the exact same thing.
> I'm just pointing out this fact to all the people who claim Hipmunk's advantage is their gantt view..which ITA already has a versin of and can be improved to match or be better than Hipmunk's.
But have not so far, so Hipmunk's remains an advantage. You "could always" copy to match, in theory. Does not mean it's technically feasible, let alone easy. Or that you think it's a good idea.
In a few weeks/months Google will be featuring this search result when you type "nyc to sfo" and take a big bite out of orbitz, kayak, and whoever's lunch that's in this space.
EDIT: The counterargument to this, is that orbitz, kayak, and friends are some of the heaviest purchasers of PPC ads. So Google be at risk of cannibalizing if they push this too hard.
Google can take the $5 from the Airlines and laugh all the way to the bank.
If the airline refuses to pay and google doesn't display their flights then their results are incomplete.
The airlines will probably understand that google wants to be able to list their flights and will negotiate harder because of it.
Possibly... However sites like hipmunk will be used as a comparison in so many press articles and blog posts when google starts pushing this.
Many start ups have won against google. Google Notepad & Evernote, Google Wave & Twitter, Google Ride Finder & Uber etc...
.. but I still wouldn't want to be in this space right now.
Most people aren't going to be interested in replacing something that works with something that sometimes works. Google might have a great flight search engine, but if I have to use Orbitz 30% of the time, I'll just use Orbitz. I already have an account set up there, and I can actually buy the ticket instead of having to find the flight, go to the airline web site, and search the flight again to buy it.
I want to be able to setup standard trips/itineraries and be able to single clik re-book them with simply a leave and return date.
Further, I want the system to auto arrange for a cab/shuttle/uber to pick me up and take me to my destination.
For example, I fly to LAX several times a month - Nome Alaska once a month, Soon it will be Dallas once a month - and various places in the bay area.
If I can setup my "Visit LAX trip" with all my details and know that a car was waiting for me when I got to LAX to take me to my office/hotel and I didnt have to do anything other than click "Re-book LAX" that would save me so much time and hassle.
I would setup my preferred airlines, times and seats (Virgin America etc...)
The big one, though, is that layovers are not reflected on the map. Granted, it may push me slightly towards more expensive flights, but I would appreciate the ability to see the grid of ugliness and waiting I'm buying into to get that super cheap ticket.
I don't think that map as it is now is worth the screen real estate.
When clicking the large blue button to the right of a flight, several rows of return flights drop down below that. The only visual distinction between these specific sub-rows and the other departing flights below is a thin blue/gray border on the sides.
Going from A to B is called an "Outbound flight", while going from B to A is called a "Return flight". Copy is very important in UI design. It should be outbound/inbound or depart/return, not some mix of different terminology.
Durations are always "-- Xh -->". What is the point of the arrow if it is always pointing to the right? Why is the duration a lighter shade than the rest of the text?
The left column is a Gawker/Gizmodo style static column that locks in place when scrolling down. The Google search results page doesn't do that.
These are basics, and a company the size of Google with as many employees as it has should be able to get these things right.
"Depart" means something different: it refers to the beginning of each leg of the journey. Its opposite is "arrive". So you might have an outbound leg which departs from LAX and arrives in SFO, and then a return leg which departs from SFO and arrives in LAX.
But webjet (Departing/Returning) and skyscanner (Depart/Return) seem to back you up.
I guess when they are combined into /travel they will be internationalized.
I know we were all rooting for The 'Munk, but it seems that Google's use of Price x Duration matrix effectively steals the thunder from Hipmunk's agony filter.
I mean, it's not as if Google needs the affiliate revenue, and I bet the Hipmunk guys would have preferred it had Google decided to "organise the world's information" through an acquisition. I think I'd need a good cry if this happened to me :(
http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-company-that-HipMunk-copied...
If you're buying a ticket for a flight less than a month away, the prices start to rise dramatically as the flight date draws nearer. But if you're buying a ticket for a flight more than a month away, it's more-or-less the same price as a flight that's a month away. [1]
So absent any other information, the 'normal' price can help people ballpark costs more quickly, something I'd expect to be statistically more common than actually searching to book a specific flight on specific dates.
[1] With exceptions for destinations with very defined/popular seasons, holidays and things like that.
I found that all of the major carrier websites I could remember off the top of my head did not employ the date-ahead practice.
Delta - no US Airways - no Southwest - no Virgin America - no Continental - no
I followed that by a Google search for "flight search" and checked the sites that came up in roughly the 1st and 2nd pages. Where I put "yes" and the date range, this date range was pre-populated.
Based on Google for "flight search" Priceline - no Travelocity - no Kayak - yes 9/27/11-10/4/11 Expedia - no Cheapflights - no Flightsearch.com - yes 9/27/11-10/4/11 Tripadvisor - yes 9/27/11-10/4/11 Farebuzz.com - yes 9/27/11-10/4/11 http://www.skyscanner.com/ - yes 9/27/11-10/4/11
Finally, I checked YC's own Hipmunk, and they do not do it either.
Hipmunk - no
So my original statement was at least partly false. It doesn't seem like "almost all" after all. And the ones that I could find doing the date-ahead practice all had identical dates. I suspect all of them use the same backend search product.
I don't care enough at this point anymore to follow up on this anymore, so I'll leave it at that.
Have you thought about doing some A/B testing on providing a default and not?
Hipmunk's killer feature is the ability to easily visualize the flight in terms of the time you leave, the time you arrive and the time spent at various intermediate locations. It becomes more useful when there are no nonstop flights. Google is taking a different approach with their UI, which is fine.
In terms of whether I'd use google or hipmunk to search for flights in the future, I'd say that it depends on what my priorities are for that particular flight.
On the other hand, users are fickle and traffic can be a bit butterfly-effecty, so it's hard to predict the impact of something like this. That said, I don't expect Hipmunk to panic or take this lying down.
I like you.
This Google search interface is pretty nice, and makes a lot more sense than Hipmunk did.
Hipmunk gives me a "heat map" style presentation which I can understand multiple factors at once without scanning text:
Color = carrier / layovers
Line length = total travel duration
Timeline position = flight start/end time
Ordered by Agony (or whatever)
I can take one quick look and grasp all the flights without a second thought. In my opinion, Hipmunk's UI is genius where Google's looks like a school project.
Google's flight search doesn't look fun.
Disclaimer: This is a throwaway account. I'm a person who has had a travel startup. I've decided to halt, once Google has finally acquired ITA Software.
Travel is one of the world's largest industries (~5th), and online sales are its significant part (~10-30%, depending on the market), growing strongly. Online travel agencies (OTA) are among the few companies on web that get real money (~$150 per sale) from customers (it is relatively easy to make serious revenue).
Online travel sales consist mostly of flight bookings, and hotel reservations.
On these markets, there are roughly three categories of players. Airlines and hotels _provide_ the inventory, that is flights and hotel rooms. Computer reservations systems (GDS) _manage_ the inventory. Online travel agencies _sell_ the inventory.
Specifically, there are thousands of airlines and hotels (e.g. Hyatt, Lufthansa). However, there are only three major GDS operators in the US and Europe (i.e. Amadeus, Sabre and Travelport), as well as only few big OTAs (i.e. Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz, Priceline, Hotels.com, and Opodo).
Few decades ago, before Internet, airlines and hotels were unable to sell inventory on their own. It definitely takes more time to set up an office than a connection between two airports. Thus, it made sense to use travel agencies for this purpose.
Over time, airlines and hotels became also unable to manage their inventory. Synchronization of reservations between thousands of third parties is a non-trivial task, not a core competency of involved companies. Thus, it made sense to use a middle man.
That's what GDS systems do. They manage inventory, what includes reservations (PNR), its availability, prices, and exchanging data with others. As far as I know, right now, airlines and hotels pay them for the service, and for each reservation made (~few bucks).
Internet has complicated things a bit. Travel agencies are no longer so vital, as both airlines and hotels are able (at least, they think so) to sell the inventory on their own. Unfortunately, they were too slow again, and OTAs has emerged meanwhile (Expedia), giving the second youth to GDS companies.
The ecosystem is like an old marriage couple, although a threesome. Each party hat hates each other, but there's no other way around. To oversimplify a bit, OTAs have _customers_ (traffic), GDS systems _manage_ the inventory (with airlines, hotels, and OTAs) and both airlines and hotels _provide_ the inventory, after all.
From time to time there's an affair. Low-cost airlines try to distrupt the market by selling tickets so cheaply partially because they sell them directly. Major OTAs, like Expedia, partially grow to a GDS category. Some airlines or hotel chains withdraw from GDS systems, and return eventually with negiotiated better fees. However, it's mostly business as usual.
Today, if you want to start an online travel agency you have to speak with a GDS company. Depending on your market, it might be Amadeus, Sabre or Travelport. After a long selling process, you get access to the system, and you can start selling the reservations.
What's important, though, nearly all systems used today were created a decade, or two, ago. As core competency of GDS companies is in selling, then, as far as I know, they outsource the software evelopment to third parties, and it's not that easy to innovate on a critical part of the world's infrastructure.
What you end up with, then, is an access to an undocumented API that lets you to search, and manage your reservations. Insiders are used to the quirks, like waiting few seconds until you get the response, random issues, or hinting the system so you get a better response than others. Importantly, you're actively discoured to cache the data, as the prices change rather frequently.
The critical part here is search. It's a mathematically non-trivial problem to very quickly find rates within thousands of connections, definitely beyond technical know-how of GDS operators, airlines and hotels. ITA Software has managed to get access to the inventory and while, as far as I know, they do not sell resevations, they've created a much better (faster) search.
Meanwhile, few years ago, metasearches (e.g. Kayak, Hipmunk) emerged. Smart folks have realized that the competition is on price, customers look for a single place to compare prices, and operate under assumption that what really counts is traffic. From both customers and metasearch perspective, it does not make that big difference where do they buy the reservation from, an OTA or directly from an airline.
So, here we are today.
As a beggining travel agency, you likely have to pay annually for access, and for each request made, especially if you exceed the quota negotiated with the GDS company. Few years ago you were able to make profit by incurring a transaction fee to each ticket sold, but now transaction fees are nearly non-existent, and it's more frequent to rely on provisions from GDS companies, and, sometimes, airlines.
What's your competetive advantage? Basically, you cannot provide much better product than your competitors, as everyone relies on the similar legacy GDS system that returns the flight details rather slowly. Most of the time, only choices are either to show the results a bit differently, or bet on more trustful brand.
The focus is on efficiency. Profit per ticket is so slim, so cost of customers acquisitions is what really matters. OTAs, metasearches and, increasingly, airlines, together with hotels, master SEM, SEO, and other forms of advertisement (newsletters, banners). They live and die by the numbers. If you've figured out how to scalably make $1 more profit on each reservation made, you're covered for some time. The novel methods are, obviously, eventually realized by others, too.
In this race to the bottom there's one clear winner. Google's AdWords is a major source of traffic for all parties, and I bet that they already make the biggest profit off each reservation made. Once Google has acquired ITA Software, they now have both traffic and the inventory.
True you dont need Google. We would all love their traffic but having played with the tool for the past 24 hours. I have noticed the changes in inventory state and they are doing exactly what we could have expected them to do.
Sadly that is also the downside - they did exactly what we expected them to do. A mediocre job that is fast and of course "good enough".
A small team can (and has) replicated what Google has done. In fact there are many of them. But Google does not provide Trust and in my reasonably jaundiced view - this is another rearranging of the deck chairs.
The issues are now out in the open. The core infrastructure of search is REALLY hard if you work on the same premise as Google. If you change the basics then there is a different answer.
Will the basics change? I believe the answer has to be yes because otherwise the original premise of the first poster must logically be correct.
I believe not. I am working specifically to change that - if you are interested - then ping me.
No international flights yet: Fail but not surprising
That's okay I want to fly from NY to Vegas next year. No flights for April 2012: Fail that was not expected.
I don't really understand why Google launches stuff like this when it has a lovely user interface but is a bit halfbaked in terms of the data that they've put in.
I guess I'll go back in a years time when they remind me about it.
?!? I'm using the Android browser!
Also, what's up with all these people saying that it's so limited because it doesn't do international and such. It seems very obvious that this thing will get better and better and like others have said, eventually end up on top of the search page. This is assuming it gains traction quickly and doesn't get nuked.
The problem is that as this expands to more cities and takes more stops, you end up hitting an NP problem.
There are occasions when this strategy produces good results, however: last year I needed a last-minute one way flight from a small southeastern city (TYS / Knoxville) to San Francisco, and the fares were extremely high ($800+). But flights to Orlando were very cheap due to competition from low-cost leisure carriers, and the last-minute fares from Orlando (MCO) to San Francisco were quite reasonable. I booked, on a single ticket and flying on a single airline the entire way, TYS-IAD-MCO-IAD-DEN-SFO. This gave me a TYS-MCO fare plus an MCO-SFO fare, which was hundreds of dollars cheaper than the more direct TYS-DEN-SFO. At the time, saving money was a lot more important than getting to San Francisco a couple of hours earlier. A cunning plan that cannot fail!
Except that I missed my first flight of the morning due to an overnight road closure that blocked my only way of leaving the house. By the time that I got to the airport, my originally booked flight had already left and I was faced with a very long wait for the next flight to IAD, which virtually guaranteed I wouldn't even make it to San Francisco that day. It was only through a combination of charisma and blind luck that I managed to convince the airline to reroute me direct through Denver, which is completely against company policy. They only charged me the $50 same-day standby fee.
Needless to say, I would never sell that sort of a ticket to the general public. Far too many different ways in which things could go horribly wrong. It's also likely that the airlines would promptly revoke your ticketing privileges with them were they to discover you were routinely issuing these sorts of tickets.
That said, I can't really use it until it supports multiple destinations/open jaw in a single search.
I can't wait till this is implemented in Canada.
Kayak beware!
This definitely looks better than Kayak. ^_^
The absolute barebones should be shown: Starting location, Destination, Dates. And then maybe a less noisy version of the price-points plot from which one can just drag and drop certain options into a bucket for comparison.
The fact that so much scrolling needs to be done to even get a basic understanding of the results means this needs to be reworked.
Post this again when I can actually use it.
"Sorry, locations outside the U.S. are currently not supported."
They're taking the release-early-iterate-often approach to this new service, which means that they're not going to make everyone happy immediately.
Rather than dismiss this new service just because it doesn't fit your specific use case right now, think about this from a different (i.e. hacker) perspective -- this is a cool new service that will obviously become even cooler as it gets more advanced.
My common use case is "I will spend $X to go anywhere for under Y days any time in the future" and I haven't found a service that makes this easy.
Kayak's "explore" page is the closest I've found, but they rarely have the cheapest flights listed and have no way to set duration. Has anyone found a better solution?
And on rare occasions another airline does beat Southwest's price. Sometimes I see flights in and out of JFK turn up cheaper on Delta.
My point is if you fly coach especially with Delta they treat you like a slave and stuff you with almost zero space to move (I am american, but not obese (5'9, 200lb). Forget flight search engines I can find a flight, make a me a faster more tolerable flight, you are friggin GOOGLE!
Computer efficiency still is rapidly moving up. Airplane efficiency is near its limits.
There were many articles about Google's acquisition of ITA, and various stipulations around InstaSearch:
"As a condition of the deal, Google must continue to license ITA's QPX software for airfare websites on "fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms" through 2016. And it must commit to continued investment in ITA's QPX software and in ITA's unreleased InstaSearch product, which aims to provide near instant airline fare quotes."
http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/article/22940...
Disclosure: I worked for ITA until rumors of the acquisition.
(The governor of IL and the Chicago mayor also asked Amtrak to study how to extend some of the Amtrak routes to O'Hare, presumably to replace some ``commuter'' flights, and they wanted the study done by the end of this summer, but I haven't seen any evidence of the study being done yet.)
Give it 6 months or so.
Glad to see Google was finally able to push something like this. Main feature missing that Y! Faremaps had is the ability to specify a span of time in which you wanted to travel and the cheapest trips in that timeframe were shown. Also, you could search "weekends only" in that timeframe.
The folks who are most interested in this app are the ones who are most likely interested in the above two points.
http://www.google.com/jobs/itasoftware/eng/ita-software-soft...
No international? No one-way? I know Google will change this, but why put out such a wildly underwhelming product?
And finally, since they are basing the whole thing on ITA anyway, we don't expect them to do anything Kayak isn't already doing.
I've recently searched for flights on Expedia and Southwest (I don't think I've visited anywhere else). Google already had those same dates and cities selected by default.
Looks like it needs another QA pass.
This is cool though
Good luck guys!