Google Defends ITA Deal Against Competitor Attacks
 

Very interesting stuff in a blog from Andrew Silverman (10/26/2010) Senior Product Manager at Google and an interesting article in response on a WSJ blog. (I couldn't find this posted anywhere on Flyertalk yet.) Provides some insight into the relationships of the major players in the airfare sales and technology fields.

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/10/...titor-attacks/

It starts off this way:
See also:
http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.c...competing.html

An excerpt:

interesting....

The mere fact that competitors oppose a deal is very strong evidence that the deal is in fact pro-competitive. If a deal was going to lead to reduced competition, competitors should be jumping for joy over it: they would benefit just as much from reduced competition, at the expense of consumers. If they're against it, it must be because they think that the combined company will in fact be more competitive, forcing them to cut prices or do other pro-consumer things to keep up.

If Toyota was planning to buy Ford, and the rest of the auto industry was talking about what a great thing that was for consumers, that would be something for consumers to worry about.

Just a tad simplistic. :eek:

Consider: competitors might be too dumb to see what is really going on; competitors might not represent interests of consumers (in fact, almost certainly do not); big G might be using this to consolidate monopolistic/oligopolistic power, or maybe something else is going on.

Hypothetically, if Microsoft opposes something does that automatically make it bad? Or, should we actually do some analysis on our own? @:-)

It's pretty much the same as every other single thing in the airline industry:

If airlines oppose it, then it's generally a good thing for pax (example: tarmac rule, DOT compensation increases) ^

If airlines are for something, it generally screws over pax (example: baggage and every other punitive fee) :td:

So, I usually go opposite to every 'want' the airlines have, and in this way I am all for the Google/ITA deal. I know why Google wants ITA and it will be excellent for pax and comparing the competition (basically take Kayak and expand the potential and search power x10).

Bingo!

Unrelated to that specific issue, has anyone given the ITA mobile apps a try? I don't use an iPhone (is anyone buying them, still?), but I've just tried out the Android version and it *kicks bootay*. On Android, go to Market>Search and look for "onthefly" (without the quotes, and without spaces, to find the proper app). It's free and works flawlessly for me. Impressive UI that is intuitive and allows for a lot of the "matrix" functionality present on the website.

While I agree that an ITA acquisition by Google would be good, your simplistic categorization based upon competitor response is not universally true. For instance, I'm a TA in a very specific niche. For a long time, we were the 3rd largest in our niche in the U.S. Then our largest competitor bought out #2. We weren't happy about the purchase because all of a sudden we were 2nd largest, but absolutely dwarfed (as in 10% of the size) by our competitor. But we've found that it's actually been excellent for us as a company. The new behemoth is a lot less nimble and customer-centric because they're so huge and we've acquired a lot of customers from them because their CS quality has gone down and customers have had the ball dropped quite a bit (we've had 20yr customers of theirs tell us they'll never purchase from them again). But it's arguable whether or not their merger was pro-consumer. Obviously it was bad for the clients that were inconvenienced, but now they're working with us and our markups are lower and our customer service is better (24/7 free emergency customer service; they charge for after-hours CS), so if they travel a lot, they're actually better off. Plus, our largest competitor now has more buying power and there's one niche airline contract that we buy through them, so consumers benefit from that too.

OT, but I disagree. I like how baggage fees put costs where they actually are and give incentive for responsible behavior. And I say this as someone who would take two 50 lb bags every time if it was free. This allows them to increase cargo profits and lower base ticket prices. It's a competitive, cutthroat market out there, so it's not going to send overall ticket prices up, it just shifts costs to where they actually are and allows them to actually lower the base ticket cost and if people can travel without luggage (or with carry-ons).

Yeah, I love it. Once I find my flight, I generally then hop on the orbitz app to quickly book - easy