Google acquires ITA Software for $700million USD, enhancing Travel Search

Google has purchased ITA Software (www.itasoftware.com), a company known for its airfare search and pricing system QPX. The ITA Software is used by many US and international airlines.

The acquisition was done in $700 million USD, cash. No stock purchase this time from Google.

This is an area Google feels they have some ground to make up.

Microsoft’s Bing has a good travel search feature where you can search and book flights / hotels from bing.com/travel

There have been previous rumors than an acquisition of Expedia was going to happen, but that never eventuated. Google is wasting no time and purchasing a big player. This now puts them into direct competition in travel search against companies like Bing Travel, Expedia and Kayak.

This is obviously a huge threat to players already in this market and it will be interesting to see how competitors react. There has always been speculation that Google would join the travel search industry as this represents a big number of queries for the company.