Owner | |
---|---|
URL | www |
Commercial | Yes |
Registration | Not required |
Launched | September 13, 2011 |
Google Flights is an online flight booking search service that facilitates the purchase of airline tickets through third-party suppliers. It was launched by Google in 2011 following a buyout. It is now part of Google Travel. [1]
In April 2011, the United States Department of Justice Antitrust Division approved Google's $700 million purchase of ITA Software. [2] On September 13, 2011, Google launched Google Flights, which used algorithms gained from this purchase. [3]
An innovation of Google Flights is that it allows open-ended searches based on criteria other than the destination; for example, a user may search for flights within a range of times and a budget and be offered various destination choices. [4] Alternatively, a user can select a destination, and Google Flights will calculate every price for each day of the next 12 months, visualized in a graph or table. This allows users to easily spot the cheapest date to fly to the destination.
Google Flights also enables its users to calculate the climate impact of their flight, but in July 2022, this tool changed the way of calculating the climate impact of flights. All the global warming impacts of flying except the CO2 emission were excluded from the calculation, halving the calculated climate impact of each flight. This move faced a backlash from environmental activists and the scientific community. [5]
The service was immediately compared to competitors such as Expedia, Orbitz, Kayak.com, and Bing. [6]
Shortly after the site launched, Expedia testified to the Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee that Google failed to keep a promise to rank Google Flight listings below the listings of competitors in a Google search. [7]
MSN is an American web portal and related collection of Internet services and apps for Windows and mobile devices, provided by Microsoft and launched on August 24, 1995, alongside the release of Windows 95.
A travel agency is a private retailer or public service that provides travel and tourism-related services to the general public on behalf of accommodation or travel suppliers to offer different kinds of travelling packages for each destination. Travel agencies can provide outdoor recreation, arranging logistics for luggage and medical items delivery for travellers upon request, public transport timetables, car rentals, and bureau de change services. Travel agencies can also serve as general sales agents for airlines that do not have offices in a specific region. A travel agency's main function is to act as an agent, selling travel products and services on behalf of a supplier. They are also called Travel Advisors. They do not keep inventory in-hand unless they have pre-booked hotel rooms or cabins on a cruise ship for a group travel event such as a wedding, honeymoon, or other group event.
Orbitz.com is a travel fare aggregator website and travel metasearch engine. The website is owned by Orbitz Worldwide, Inc., a subsidiary of Expedia Group. It is headquartered in the Citigroup Center, Chicago, Illinois.
Google LLC is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial intelligence (AI). It has been referred to as "the most powerful company in the world" and as one of the world's most valuable brands due to its market dominance, data collection, and technological advantages in the field of AI. Google's parent company Alphabet Inc. is one of the five Big Tech companies, alongside Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft.
Expedia Group, Inc. is an American travel technology company that owns and operates travel fare aggregators and travel metasearch engines, including Expedia, Hotels.com, Vrbo, Travelocity, Hotwire.com, Orbitz, Ebookers, CheapTickets, CarRentals.com, Expedia Cruises, Wotif, and Trivago. Over 3 million lodging facilities and flights on over 500 airlines are bookable on the company's websites. It has 16,500 employees, and its headquarters are located in Seattle, Washington.
ITA Software is a travel industry software division of Google, formerly an independent company, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The company was founded by Jeremy Wertheimer, a computer scientist from the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and Cooper Union, with his partner Richard Aiken in 1996. On July 1, 2010, ITA agreed to be acquired by Google. On April 8, 2011, the US Department of Justice approved the buyout. As part of the agreement, Google was required to license ITA software to other websites for five years.
Kayak is a metasearch engine for travel services, including airline flights, hotels, rental cars, and vacation packages. It is owned and operated by Booking Holdings.
Criticism of Google includes concern for tax avoidance, misuse and manipulation of search results, its use of others' intellectual property, concerns that its compilation of data may violate people's privacy and collaboration with the US military on Google Earth to spy on users, censorship of search results and content, and the energy consumption of its servers as well as concerns over traditional business issues such as monopoly, restraint of trade, antitrust, patent infringement, indexing and presenting false information and propaganda in search results, and being an "Ideological Echo Chamber".
Azul Linhas Aéreas Brasileiras S/A is a Brazilian airline headquartered in Barueri, a suburb of São Paulo. The company's business model is to stimulate demand by providing frequent and affordable air service to underserved markets throughout Brazil. The company was named Azul after a naming contest in 2008, where "Samba" was the other popular name. Azul is a publicly traded company on the Brazilian stock exchange, with the ticker AZUL4. It was established on 5 May 2008 by Brazilian-born David Neeleman, with a fleet of 76 Embraer 195 jets. The airline began service on 15 December 2008.
Momondo is a travel fare aggregator and travel fare metasearch engine. momondo was founded in Denmark and is today managed by KAYAK, part of Booking Holdings.
Trivago N.V., marketed with lowercase styling as trivago, is a German technology company specializing in internet-related services and products in the hotel, lodging and metasearch fields. The company is headquartered in Düsseldorf. The American online travel company Expedia Group owns a majority of the company's stock.
Wanderu Inc. is a ground and air travel metasearch engine that operates throughout North America and Europe. It provides a search and booking platform for buses, trains, flights, and ferries through its website and mobile app. Founded in 2012, Wanderu is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts.
misterb&b is a travel and social networking website that provides a searchable database of LGBTQ-friendly rentable lodging, including rooms, apartments, hotels, and homestays, primarily catering to gay men. It is accessible via a website and a mobile app.
Busbud is a travel website specializing in intercity bus tickets.
Trip.com is a multinational travel service conglomerate with 45,000 employees. It is one of the world's largest online travel agencies with over 400 million users worldwide, and also the parent of Skyscanner.
FairSearch is a group of organizations that lobby against Google's market dominance in online search and related practices. The group is controlled by Oracle and Naspers executives and has been characterized as a consumer protection organization, a Google watchdog, as well as a front group for Microsoft. Many of its other members are also Google competitors, such as Expedia and Oracle.
This is a timeline of Microsoft, a multinational computer technology corporation.
Since 2010, the European Union has investigated several antitrust complaints against Google alleging abuses of its dominant position in breach of the EU's competition laws. Three complaints have resulted in formal charges against Google: those relating to Google Shopping, the Android operating system and to Google AdSense. Google has been found guilty of antitrust breaches in the three cases and has been fined over €8 billion. In 2020, the European Union has also launched a full investigation of Google's proposed acquisition of the fitness tracker and wearable health company Fitbit, under the EU Merger Regulation. The operation was eventually cleared on 17 December 2020 subject to conditions.
Gogobot was an online travel business headquartered in Palo Alto, California. The company was rebranded Trip.com in November 2016 and acquired by the Ctrip Group in 2017. Founded in 2010, by Travis Katz and Ori Zaltzman, by 2014 the company was the fifth most visited travel-planning site in the United States.
Google Travel, formerly Google Trips, is a trip planner service developed by Google. It was originally launched as a mobile app on September 19, 2016, for Android and iOS, which was shut down on August 5, 2019.