It was a coming out party of sorts for Jeremy Wertheimer, Google’s vice president of travel, as Google Flight Search took some baby steps to expand its coverage area.
Speaking at the PhoCusWright conference Nov. 16, Wertheimer, the longtime CEO of ITA Software when it was independent, made one of his first public appearances since “a little regulatory process” took place and he detailed some changes in Google Flight Search.
Introduced Sept. 13, about 115 days since Google acquired ITA Software, Google Flight Search now covers “three times” the number of city pairs in the US and added a one-way flights feature, Wertheimer said.
And, Google Flight Search will go international soon.
In addition to the international focus, plans call for Google Flight Search to integrate with Google+ to enhance social trip-planning, personalization features will be added, and mobile apps are in the works, Wertheimer said.
Google Flight Search, which provides flights and fares from a handful of US airlines only, has been widely criticized for its lack of comprehensiveness and pundits have wondered why Google chose to come out with such an incomplete product.
“The idea was to get something out there,” Wertheimer said, adding in classic Google fashion, “we’ll keep iterating.”
When Google Flight Search launched in September it included booking links from airlines only, but added online travel agency and Kayak advertisements at the bottom of flight search pages about a month later.
Wertheimer drew some criticism when he explained that “our airline partners were very clear” that they wouldn’t participate in Google Flight Search if online travel agency booking links were included in the core flight-search results. 
“We will work on the model,” Wertheimer said, and referring to airline demands, he added, “and we work within the parameters” set.
That airline behavior and Google’s acquiesence to it could potentially raise anticompetition concerns.
After the PhoCusWright talk, in his first press interview in almost a year-and-a-half, Wertheimer was asked if the airlines’ demands and the OTAs’ absence in core flight search results in Google Flight Search raised any antitrust concerns.
Wertheimer playfully replied that he isn’t an antitrust lawyer.
One person who wasn’t smiling about the issue the next day was Orbitz Worldwide CEO Barney Harford, who noted that his company provided testimony to the US Congress several months ago related to anticompetition concerns about Google’s role and search dominance.
“We are always concerned that someone in such a dominant position in core search takes that position of dominance and uses it to favor its own travel search results that exclude a major part of the market,” Harford said Nov. 17.
Back in the PhoCusWright conference a day earlier, Kayak CEO Steve Hafner was among two travel executives up on the stage who had a chance to publicly ask Wertheimer questions about Google Flight Search.
Kayak is an ITA Software customer and a vocal critic of Google’s acquisition of ITA, and Hafner started his questioning of Wertheimer like this: “I think you made the year a bit difficult for a lot of people,” Haftner said. “Hopefully we did the same with the FairSearch alliance.â
Kayak has indeed experienced a difficult year, having announced its IPO intent a year ago during the PhoCusWright conference.
Kayak’s hope to become a public company has been stuck at the starting gate, with Google’s purchase of ITA Software and market conditions being huge factors in the impasse.
Wertheimer shot back to Hafner: Â âI donât think Iâve ever actually aspired to make anything difficult for anybody,â Wertheimer said.
Wertheimer added that he saw Google’s acquistion of ITA as an opportunity to do so much more in flight search with Google’s resources.
Hafner also noted that Google Flight Search, which relies on a combination of Google and ITA technology, produces very fast results and he asked Wertheimer whether Google would be making the same technology available to its customers.
Wertheimer answered that QPX code can be used by partners in a variety of ways and the speedy results hinges in part on whether partners want to invest in the computing power necessary to save people time on search.
“We’d be happy to sign up Kayak again,” Wertheimer said.
In the interview after the conference session, Wertheimer was asked whether Google will soon integrate Google Flight Search and Google Hotel Finder.
“There’s always experimentation going on,” Wertheimer said.
Asked whether he was personally involved in integrating the two products, he responded: “I have oversight for everything in travel.”
Wertheimer indicated that Google remains committed to ITA’s side business — passenger services systems for airlines — and a deal will soon be announced.
Many have speculated over the years that Google could one day become an online travel agency or even a global distribution system.
ITA years ago had also worked on developing — and then abandoned — a travel agency desktop.
Asked about the OTA idea and possibility of renewing development of a travel agency desktop, Wertheimer said there are great needs in the market and no one can predict how things may develop.
“We’re open to anything,” he said.
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While Google’s decision is understandable, it’s also potentially short-sighted for Google. If Google doesn’t provide the same shopping choices as other metasearch engines, travelers may feel its metasearch tool is less useful to them than other competitors. This may inhibit Google’s ability to attract the largest possible audience.
Henry: I think Google will build out the product features, expand the audience, and then you’ll see the OTAs and meta take on a larger role. It’s untenable and anti-competitive what Google is doing now.
I think the last thing they want is to provide more fuel for FTC probers.
Dennis, are you referring to the current exclusion of OTAs on Google flight search? If so, how does that differ from the ‘exclusive’ distribution deals metas are currently bound by?
Dennis,
As âanti-competitiveâ as you say this Google policy might be, I wonder what the total potential scope of this exclusionary practice could be and how it might evolve. Will any TMC with an online capability be excluded from Google searches? Will opaque bidding sites be excluded? How about sites offering packages, charters or special dealsâŚwill they be shown only if offered by airlines? How about agencies with negotiated rates?
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Will consumers, who have come to believe that Google provides unbiased information, be duped into thinking that all their options will be presented when doing a Google flight search? Is the pro-consumer independent distribution system at risk? Would a weakened travel distribution system drive up costs for corporate managed travel?
Thoughts Dennis; others?
Fiona: You make a good point. The metas have their own exclusionary policies. A) For example, Kayak supposedly has an exclusive US OTA contract with Orbitz (although it looks like Kayak has been very, shall we say, liberal with interpreting those provisions). And B) Major airlines, including American, Delta and US Airways refuse to show their flights alongside other airline and OTAs.
Both A and B might seem, to some, to be anticompetitive as well.
But, I am just raising a question: When you have the dominant search engine and major US airlines — how few do we have any more with all of the consolidation — saying OTAs and metas can’t play on an equal footing, don’t these practices rise to a new level?
When you have a handful of airlines controlling the market and they tell the dominant search engine that no one else can compete using the same tools as them, it raises concerns.
Kevin: Now, when you do a flight search in the standard Google search box, you see all the paid ads from everyone you would expect….airlines, metasearch companies, online travel agencies etc. So I don’t see any changes there regarding what consumers would expect from Google.
However, in Google.com/Flights, you’ll only see airlines for now in the core search results. Way down at the bottom of the page, you’ll see OTA ads and metasearch ads (Kayak).
These are very early days for Google Flight Search. It will undoubtedly look very different a year from now. Other than the OTA ads at the bottom, there are no ads at all along the rails. And Google undoubtedly won’t miss out on an opportunity to fill this blank space with ads.
So, I doubt anyone — TMCs or those offering packaged travel or charters — would be excluded from advertising in these tertiary positions.
The question is whether the airlines will be able to continue to have their way in the core search results. It seems untenable, problemmatic, and short-sighted (as Henry says above).
Would this raise costs for corporate travel managers if Google Flights becomes the go-to site (we are a long way from that scenario) and non-airline advertisers have to pay big bucks just to get noticed? Looks like a strong possibility.