A low-profile software company in Cambridge may be worth $1 billion to Internet search giant Google. Well, ITA claims to handle more than 65 percent of the sales transactions on airline websites, including six of the 10 largest US airlines’ sites.
A Google purchase of ITA would help the dominant search engine compete with Microsoft’s upstart Bing search service, which has a prominent travel area that uses ITA software and features tools like ticket price predictors.
PhoCusWright’s Philip Wolf said: “What this rumored deal signals is that you can’t be serious in search without doing a better job with airlines to search, shop, and buy travel. . . . A combination of Google and ITA would be positioned to create a whole new standard for online travel sites.’’
Google could use ITA Software’s tools, which help users find online flight information, to compete with travel-search features offered by Microsoft. The companies are tussling for share in the U.S. market for online travel, which generated $88.4 billion in sales last year, according to Sherman, Connecticut, travel consulting firm PhoCusWright Inc.
“Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information, and ITA does that for travel,” said Henry Harteveldt, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc. in San Francisco.
Resource: Boston Globe
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