google there will be no against at me on a site many different hotels?

Thanx

You say like it is something bad. The more areas you touch, the more stable your company is. And by the way, I can’t say Google owns too many companies (especially comparing to Microsoft).
Google is the leader in search engine area, that is true, but their impact beyond the boundaries of the search engines area isn’t big.

That is what I think.

@Mark
Oh google has figured it out… they are a capitalist. Monetization of their properties are continuing at a fast pace. This is just one check off in that pursuit.

@Kyle
Yes this and the ITA purchase are making TA uneasy. In one sense you may be right about too many pies… on the other, one thing that Google can bring to bear in their competitive battle is the ability to invest in rapid technological change. While they are focusing too much on new features and not fixing the old one for my taste, they are rolling out new technology at a pace that few competitors can keep up with… a huge advantage in their gaining and maintaining the upper hand….

@Miriam

This is really just a variation on adwords…. they are essentially selling the space for a link to a booking service (and prefilling in some of the details).

Hotels are desperate for an alternative to the monster of booking sites…. which consume too significant a portion of their top line profits. You can see this battle more clearly playing out in the airline industry right now where the air carriers are taking the JetBlue route and telling the Expedias/Orbitzes of the world to take a hike.

Currently this feature favors booking sites but it is not too hard to imagine that it could be used to disintermediate them as well.

This is a major shakedown for the online travel industry. This almost begs the question: How many pies is too many? Google seems to have a hand in everything these days and they have yet to really slip up. I do wonder when their over-expansion will end up biting them in the rear.