People who use PL all the time (like us) are not really the intended audience of the data. The data is for people who saw a commercial with William Shatner and want to see what PL is all about. To those people the data is useful as it gives them a starting point assuming there not aware of the independent sites.

PL doesn't have to massage the data, I would think most people overbid enough that they don't have to do any manipulation. Just like a lot of people probably accept counteroffers not realizing you can underbid them most of the time.

On the same note I don't think Hotwire is killing there business by partnering with hotels.com, I would imagine they only display those when there is no opaque inventory available anyway so they couldn't of made a sale. If you search for rental cars you'll see a mix of opaque and non-opaque.