Google buys flight info provider ITA for $US700m

Internet giant Google has paid $US700 million for flight information provider ITA, and intends to blend the company’s offering into a new feature that will allow users to search for travel times and other flight details.

The company announced in a blog post it paid $US700 million in cash for the company, which provides information to a number of sources including travel agencies and online reservation systems.

The move is an obvious attempt to challenge Microsoft Bing at its own game. The rival search engine already aggregates flight data and even provides price comparisons.

Marissa Mayer, vice president for search products and user experience at Google, said in a blog post that Google will use the acquisition to expand on its aggregation projects including newspaper archives and books.

“While online flight search is rapidly evolving, we think there is room for more competition and greater innovation. Google has already come up with new ways to organize hard-to-find information like images, newspaper archives, scholarly papers, books and geographic data.”

While Google and other tech companies often buy smaller groups for their talent, and subsequently abandon the main project involved, it seems the search giant will work on incorporating ITA’s product into an entirely new service.

“Once we’ve completed our acquisition of ITA, we’ll work on creating new flight search tools that will make it easier for you to search for flights, compare flight options and prices and get you quickly to a site where you can buy your ticket.”

“The acquisition will benefit passengers, airlines and online travel agencies by making it easier for users to comparison shop for flights and airfares and by driving more potential customers to airlines’ and online travel agencies’ websites. Google won’t be setting airfare prices and has no plans to sell airline tickets to consumers.”

TechCrunch has reported that a group of companies including Kayak, Expedia, Travelport and even Microsoft, wanted to block an earlier attempt from Google to buy ITA because they all depend on the company’s info.

However, despite holding out for a $US1 billion offer, the company reportedly agreed to the original $US700 million purchase price.