Microsoft must be busy reorganizing their stuff, considering how they have already stopped official support for the Windows XP operating system and its Office 2003 suite, not to mention closing the door on a service on its Bing Travel site, too. Apparently, this flight price prediction tool is no longer an option on the site. Bummer. According to a Microsoft spokesperson, this decision to shut down the flight price prediction tool was “a business decision to focus resources on areas where we feel there are the greatest opportunities to serve travel needs.”
I suppose the future is really unchartered territory, whether you are in possession of a palantir or not, since one can never be able to tell what is going to be a hit or not. After all, I am quite sure that Microsoft must have had grand plans for forking out a rumored $115 million for Farecast in 2008, which is the company that provided the technology required for such a tool.
The whole premise of the flight price prediction tool is to check out if a particular airline flight that one intends to hop on down the road would increase or decrease in price. Oren Etzioni, the original founder of Farecast, was not too happy to hear of this closure by Microsoft, where he thinks that this happens to be one of the “most distinctive features of Bing.” For those who are looking for alternatives, there is always Kayak.
Filed in . Read more about Bing (Microsoft) and Microsoft.