Google takes off

Google launched Flight Search yesterday. It’s a Kayak-like service that shows flight information when you type departure and landing points into your search. This, of course, is the long expected travel service that Google was able to launch after finally getting approval to acquire travel software company ITA. That deal was fought doggedly by other travel companies like Expedia and Orbitz because they felt it would give Google an unfair advantage. ITA is the back end travel-specific search software that all the major travel sites use. The competitors feared Google would provide them a worse version of the software and generally use it to gain unfair advantage. Well, game on.