Expedia, Travelocity say Google has crossed the "creepy line"

Not to defend Expedia, but if Google puts their own travel results on the front page, improving Expedia's website wouldn't help them. It could be made of gold-plated strippers, but no one would ever find out because they'd just use Google's flight search, even if Google's flight search sucked. Not that Google would make a crappy flight search (especially with ITA), but the point is that even if other companies did innovate and did make a better flight search that is theoretically better for the consumer, that still wouldn't be able to beat Google putting their own thingy on the front SERP. Don't get me wrong, Google's move is probably better for the consumer and Expedia does suck and deserves to get crushed on its own merit (or lack thereof), but despite that, "just do a better job" is not a viable option, and Expedia's complaints that Google has an anticompetitive advantage are legitimate.

The article raises a pretty good point regardless of what fixable usability issue some site has:

"Companies like Expedia worry that the acquisition could lead Google to present a matrix of actual fares on its search results page, above all of the other sites that sell tickets. At that point, the key question becomes: which sites will Google's results link to, and what (if anything) will be the cost of those links?"

This affects more than just entrenched guys, it means newcomers will also have to buy their way to the top as well.

If Expedia was worth using then people would go back to it vs. praying that Google will come up with something better.

I want a travel site that gives Google style search results based on my preferred time of day, start and end locations, and price. If it's 200 dollars cheaper to use a less convenient airport or an evening flight then show it to me but I would rather use the local airport etc. Yet, the only option for most people is to use all these crappy search systems to build such a list by hand.

PS: Expedia does not even provide suggestions when someone has a typo EX: 'Washinton DC'. It then asks which one of several local airports to use (you can't pick more than one). No wonder they are afraid of Google.

Also no Orbitz - owned by airlines.

Now that you mention Hipmunk, I just became convinced that Google will acquire them. A market they are interested in with a small team of talented hackers with a product with proven traction, who probably wouldn't mind working for Google on their own project (since the lead dev already worked in a similar arrangement before) if the price is right.

Because Google have already bought it?

Their GDSs are crap sometimes still running on mainframes. Also the airline fares scam comes from the same groups. They purposely keept alternatives out for decades. Karma.

That seems to be the crux of the issue. Consumer positive is apparently not in Expedia/Travelocity's best interests. Dredging up old Stanford-days quotes of Google's founders seems a bit disingenuous.

To the extent it's not consumer positive it's like Windows and IE, vs Netscape, et al. Windows and Word, vs other word processors, etc.

By Google integrating and promoting their own information service at the top of search results it's very similar to Microsoft bundling, promoting and defaulting to their own in-house equivalents to what would otherwise be third-party apps sold by separate businesses. Is that a net win for consumers? Not sure. It's both good and bad. But it's definitely a chilling effect for those other vendors -- assuming they don't get a juicy buyout or licensing deal in order to be adapted into the very thing they would otherwise fear. In this case, an integrated travel search promoted by Google.

It would be consumer positive if Google shows the optimal flights (according to the user's criteria) and the lowest fares. If Google shows suboptimal results, it's likely that people will just take those rather than go to another site that provides better results.