Companies like Expedia worry that the acquisition could lead Google to present a matrix of actual fares on its search results page
How is that not consumer positive?
How is that not consumer positive?
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.
Sort of, but it's as if Microsoft is still stuck on the IE3 release and grumping about Mozilla Firefox 4 being better. The Expedia quote basically says "dear God, Google might actually make a usable fare finder instead of presenting users with a useless interface designed to make it hard to find the actual low fares we promote!"