NYNY Solutions

Rumours emerging about Google moving in to swallow Expedia all seem to miss one thing - Google’s AdWords revenue to a large extent comes from travel.

Now, Google owning Expedia would alienate just about every OTA out there.

1) Their money spent with Google would support the activities of Expedia, which is already kind of the Boogeyman for smaller companies.

2) Although Google claims to respect privacy and integrity of information - using Google Analytics and AdWords conversion tracking would seem like a pretty exposed setup. Knowing Google/Expedia has the funds to out-price just about everyone they want to, for as long as they like - who would want to risk showing on the radar?

I can name a bunch of them that would actively start looking for other traffic sources to spend their money on, rather than paid search in Google.

This is all healthy paranoia - sure, profitable traffic today and tomorrow would still look like a good idea to an OTA, but they would know they were also nurturing a beast that might decide to go after them.

Here’s some advice for you, Google, if you guys are to buy one single travel industry player, it should be kayak.com - hands down.

Oh, and if I’m wrong and you actually go ahead and buy Expedia, it BETTER be because you plan to finally build a space elevator, and need Expedia to administrate the tickets for it. Actually, I’d be kind of cool with that.