Google Flight Search ruffles the feathers of competitors

It looks like Google, the company whose motto is “Do no evil” is finally under fire from its competitors due to anti-trust issues. Since Google launched its Flight Search feature which made looking for airline prices a convenient thing to do on its search engine, people have been using less of other websites such as Priceline, Travelocity and Kayak. Apparently these websites rely on Google for 10-20% of their web traffic, and with Google putting up its own Flight Search results on the top of its search pages, people are less likely to click on links to other ticketing websites.

While Google’s Flight Search may seem like an unfair service to offer – it is a very useful service to people shopping for flight tickets. And if competitors have to rely on Google to bring visitors to its own website, perhaps they’ll need to find a new way to bring customers directly to their websites. What do you think?

George Wong
Categories: Web
Tags: Google