Google To Buy ITA Software, Rule E-commerce Travel Business: Watch For Justice Department Review

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jul 2, 5:28AM EDT · Published Jul 1, 4:30PM EDT

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Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) will try to dominate the online e-commerce travel market the way it has come to dominate cellphone operating systems with its Android product. In other words, it is impossible to tell whether its buyout for ITA Software will ever bear fruit financially.

The price is $700 million. ITA is an important provider of software specializing in organizing airline data, including flight times, availability and prices.Google said the acquisition of ITA Software will create a new, easier way for users to find better flight information online, which should encourage more users to make their flight purchases online.

The ITA products are critical to most airline and travel e-commerce sites, which means that companies such as Priceline.com Inc. (NASDAQ:PCLN) and Orbitz Worldwide Inc. (NASDAQ:OWW) will be unhappy.

The deal is almost certain to be reviewed by The Justice Department. Google clearly plans to aggressively push itself into something that has been other people’s business.

Douglas A. McIntyre

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.