It was announced on July 2nd, 2010, that Google Inc. plans to buy out travel software company ITA for 700 million USD. Currently, Google Inc. is the world's largest Internet search engine. However, their company has many business endeavors in different areas other than just being an internet search engine.
Not long ago, they acquired mobile advertising firm AdMob for a price of 750 million USD. ITA is currently one of the most dominant and popular travel search websites. The combination of these two companies could be quite influential in the rapidly growing online travel industry.
ITA Software is a privately-owned company that provides software which organizes flight information such as flight fares and flight schedules. In the aviation industry, this company is a source of information used by travel agents, airlines and other websites including Hotwire, Kayak, Orbitz and Microsoft's Bing. Many travel-seeking customers use these services to book cheaper flights and to check for scheduled flights.
To obtain ITA, Google had to beat out bidding competition from Expedia, Kayak.com and Travelport. It is uncertain how Google will use their new software acquisition at this point, but this will provide them an opportunity to enhance their travel-related searches to make it more convenient and efficient for it's users. Microsoft, one of Google's competitors in the online travel searching industry, acquired the Farecast travel information service back in 2008. However, this acquisition by Google will provide them a good opportunity to solidly compete in the rapidly growing online travel industry.
