Google has said today that it will purchase travel comparison firm ITA Software for $700 million, but did admit that there is a chance that regulators will not let the deal pass.
The search giant outbid Kayak, an ITA rival, for the company.
ITA is widely used by airlines, travel agents and sites such as Expedia in an effort to bring the easiest comparison of flight times, prices, and availability.
Google says the deal will benefit consumers as it gives them a “new, easier way to find better flight information online, which should encourage more users to make their flight purchases online.”
Reveals CEO Eric Schmidt: “Airline tickets online is a very large business, and of course a global business but I don’t know about you all, but when I do it, I find it sort of frustrating. The prices are changing constantly. The availability is changing all the time. There’s so many thousands of options, even for a simple itinerary. Users are going between multiple websites and ultimately not a very good user experience, although people trying make this better. So when we looked at it, we said we still had more room for competition here and innovation.”
Google plans to integrate ITA quickly into its dominant search engine.
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Until March, Theflyonthewall.com posted research reports and press releases on its website, usually minutes before the banks the headlines came from were even shared the reports with their clients.
In March however, U.S. District Judge Denise Cote ruled that the site “engaged in systematic misappropriation,”, making money and getting a “free ride” from analyst moves which usually move stock prices positively or negatively.
The banks that brought the case were Merrill Lynch, Barclays and Morgan Stanley which also tried to ban the site from using their research reports.
However, TFOTW’s appeal has gained some legs today, with both Google and Twitter backing the site, saying blocking immediate news dissemination is “obsolete” and “wrong.”
Reads the filing: “News reporting always has been a complex ecosystem, where what is ‘news’ is often driven by certain influential news organizations, with others republishing or broadcasting those facts — all to the benefit of the public.”
Both companies say if the court’s decision is upheld, the banks will go after other sites that offer real-time news updates in the financial markets.
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Engadget has reported today that Apple and AT&T originally signed a five-year exclusivity pact in 2007 with the launch of the original iPhone, although it is unclear whether that deal is still in effect, just three years later.
The site found the official details out after reading a 2008 court filing by Apple, although a USAToday report made it clear in 2007 that AT&T was the exclusive distributor of the phone in the United States. Verizon also passed on the original deal.
The filing was necessary because Apple and AT&T were the subject of a class-action lawsuit filed in 2007, which claimed that the carrier had a monopoly over iPhone customers, since after their contract expired, they could not jump to another carrier, as the handset was locked down.
Nilay Patel of Engadget says the real question may be whether the deal is still in effect, or been reworked since 2008: “Contracts can be canceled, amended, and breached in many ways, and AT&T’s spotty recent service history plus the explosion of the iPhone and the mobile market in general have given Apple any number of reasons to revisit the deal. In addition, the two companies obviously hit the negotiating table again to hammer out the iPad’s pricing plans, and there’s no way of knowing whether that deal involves the iPhone as well.”
It will be interesting to see whether or not an iPhone for Verizon or any other carrier is on the way sometime this year, or if that 2012 deal is still in effect.
