Farecast had a little surprise for people waiting to see who opened the checkbook and picked up the business. Microsoft partnered with Farecast for its travel site on MSN previously.

On the Farecast blog, CEO Hugh Crean confirmed Microsoft bought the company. “We look forward to sharing more details in the weeks to come,” he said.

As is customary for the purchase of a private company, Microsoft and Farecast did not disclose the purchase price. However, John Cook cited a price range of $75 million to $115 million; the higher figure seems less likely.

If interest in Farecast came from Google and Expedia while Microsoft sought to buy them, as Cook suggested, Microsoft probably paid a mild premium to keep the company out of their hands.

Farecast’s backers enjoyed some good fortune in a time when economic forces might have conspired to thwart such an acquisition. Though even a high bid of $115 million would be monopoly money to Microsoft, the company still has a potential Yahoo purchase in the works.

Oil prices and a weak dollar mean airfares will probably run high during the busy summer travel season. We have to wonder how effective Farecast will be over the next few months. If jet fuel costs continue to rise, there won’t be many downward trends in airfare for Farecast to detect.

 Farecast Hotels features Hotel Rate Key, a pricing comparison tool that allows users to see if they are receiving a good value on their hotel. The feature flags hotels as a deal or not a deal.

"Where should I stay? Am I getting a good deal? These are important questions when shopping for a hotel," said Hugh Crean, Farecast’s president and chief executive officer.

"No other travel search site offers expert advice and information to help you make the right tradeoffs and smarter hotel purchase decisions."

The initial beta version will use historical rates and offer Hotel Rate Keys for more than 5,000 hotels in 30 major cities in the U.S. for up to 90 days in the future. The Hotel Rate Key compares individual hotel’s current rates to its past rates for the same travel dates and other travel dates on the same days of the week.

Along with the Hotel Rate Key, Farecast users can shop 80,000 hotels in cities around the globe. Farecast Hotels provides an interface with tools to help users find the hotel they are looking for. Features include searching current hotel rates and detailed information on the hotel properties. Mapping property locations in your destination using Microsoft Virtual Earth and filtering to narrow search results, sort by listings or identify hotels close to an address, or point of interest.

MSN will provide its users with free airfare predictions and planning tools on the MSN Travel Channel. The partnership is the first distribution deal for Farecast to bring its travel technology and planning tools to a wider audience.

"We are thrilled to partner with MSN," said Hugh Crean, president and chief executive officer of Farecast.

"This agreement is further validation of the value of Farecast’s predictive technology to help people make smarter buying decisions and be more empowered when shopping for travel. MSN is committed to delivering innovative content to its loyal customers, and we look forward to being a part of its growing travel channel."

MSN Travel users will also have access to Farecast’s travel planning tools. Users will be able to answer trip planning decisions, such as when and where they should travel, where they can afford to travel and the best airfare deals from their local airport.

"Farecast is changing the way consumers shop for airfare by helping them answer the difficult question, ‘Should I buy now or wait?’ when shopping for an airfare," said Jeff Dossett, executive producer and general manager at MSN.

"Integrating Farecast’s unique airfare predictions and tools is part of our overall strategy to build out a rich set of innovative and differentiated content and services in travel and across all channels on the MSN media network."

With Fare Guard, airfare tracking site Farecast allows people to protect a low-priced airfare for one week. This gives travelers who are firming up travel plans the opportunity to continue to shop around without losing a good price if fares increase.

The site keeps its Fare Guard customers up to date via email. Fare Guard works as a short-term insurance policy against a fare increase. As they explain it on the site:

Farecast provides an airfare prediction service for more than 75 airports. They base their predictions on historical pricing patterns, and suggesting buying or waiting depending on that information. All of the prices come from airline websites, and bookings go through those sites, not Farecast.

Available destination cities for fare information vary depending on the departure city. While the WebProNews home airport in Lexington is not a Farecast departure city yet, Louisville’s Standiford Field and Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky Airport are in the list.

Cincinnati has 22 destinations currently in Farecast, while Louisville has seven. WebProNews fun fact: Guess which state Cincinnati Airport is in. The correct answer is Kentucky, not Ohio, which is why Cincinnati has the airport code CVG for Covington, KY.

Farecast allows visitors to nominate home airports and destinations that are not in the list yet, for future consideration.

Three bucks is a cheap bet to make that prices will change favorably in a week. It will be interesting to see if Farecast tries to maintain the $9.95 price after the beginning of February.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.