{"id":300,"date":"2006-04-17T11:37:40","date_gmt":"2006-04-17T15:37:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mathewingram.com\/work\/2006\/04\/17\/is-google-travel-the-next-to-launch\/"},"modified":"2006-04-17T11:37:40","modified_gmt":"2006-04-17T15:37:40","slug":"is-google-travel-the-next-to-launch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2006\/04\/17\/is-google-travel-the-next-to-launch\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Google Travel the next to launch?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just posted something to my Globe and Mail blog<\/a> about Google’s possible entry into the travel game, which stemmed from a recent post by Russell Shaw over at ZDNet<\/a>. Seems he noticed an ad on mediabistro.com for “Google: Senior Account Executive, Travel Vertical.” Among other things, it said that the successful applicant would:<\/p>\n

“Drive new business revenue growth with our Fortune 1000 advertisers in a specified vertical in one or more regions… work collaboratively with your team to grow revenue with new and existing vertical customers [and] utilize strong knowledge of vertical client base and agencies in your region(s) to develop high-level relationships.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One former travel industry insider told me recently that he figured it was only a matter of time before Google got into the travel game, since it is a classic example of a business in which timely information is the key to getting a good deal — and one in which the travel agents and airlines used to control the information flow. Expedia.com and Travelocity.com helped “disintermediate” the industry, and in a sense the entry of Google would just extend that process even further. <\/p>\n

“A lot of the value that a reseller adds is shopping around for the best deal, which is to a large extent search — and Google can search the pants off just about anybody,” said this former travel exec. For Google, being a search-engine company doesn’t just mean helping people find websites. It wants to help you find just about any kind of information, anywhere — including in books<\/a> and real estate<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Against that kind of backdrop, searching for flights and hotels seems like a no-brainer, and Yahoo is already moving in that area<\/a> with its FareChase service (which the NYT has an article<\/a> about). Russell says that he thinks Google might strike up a partnership with Orbitz, since Travelocity is partners with Yahoo Travel and Expedia is owned by Barry Diller’s Interactive Corp., which also owns Ask.com.<\/p>\n

Update:<\/b><\/p>\n

My friend Stuart MacDonald, an ex-travel guy himself, has these thoughts<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just posted something to my Globe and Mail blog about Google’s possible entry into the travel game, which stemmed from a recent post by Russell Shaw over at ZDNet. Seems he noticed an ad on mediabistro.com for “Google: Senior Account Executive, Travel Vertical.” Among other things, it said that the successful applicant would: “Drive new … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Is Google Travel the next to launch?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crsspst_to_mathewingramblogwordpresscom":false,"mf2_syndication":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}