If you have a beef with Google’s actions, the trendy thing to do these days appears to be making a video about it, and using Eric Schmidt quotes and likenesses, making them as creepy as possible.
The latest such video comes from FairSearch.org. This is an organization that refers to itself as, "a group of businesses united in support of a healthy Internet future, where greater consumer choice and economic growth are driven by competition, transparency and innovation in online search."
The businesses are a bunch of travel firms, namely TripAdvisor, Travelocity, Kayak, Hotwire, Expedia, SideStep, Sabre Holdings, and Farelogix, that are not happy with Google’s pending acquisition of ITA Software, which is currently under review by the Department of Justice.
Here’s the video explaining the organization’s position:
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Google Buys ITA – A Travel Story from FairSearch.org on Vimeo. |
It’s not the entire travel industry that is against Google’s acquisition, however. Google lists quotes from Priceline, Orbits, Everbread, Travelport, Virgin Atlantic, and others here.
"Our reason for making this acquisition is simple: ITA will help us provide better results for our users. When someone searches for ‘flights from San Francisco to London,’ we’d like to provide not just ‘ten blue links’ but exact flight times and prices as well — just as our competitors do today," Google’s Andrew Silverman said last week. "We’ve already been experimenting with similar results in different areas."
In disputing the claim that "instead of buying ITA, Google could just license its data," he said, "We think we can make more significant innovations and bigger breakthroughs in online flight search for consumers by combining our engineering expertise with ITA’s than we would by just licensing ITA’s data service."
According to FairSearch.org, it’s "Bob" AKA: the consumer that is worried about the deal. As a consumer, do you agree?
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