When the CEO of Kayak told CNBC recently that Google Flight Search was “an inferior product” to his own service, some might have considered it typical Steve Hafner posturing.
He went on to claim that the launch of GFS (arriving, finally in September 2011, after the Department of Justice gave Google the thumbs-up to buy ITA Software for $700 million earlier that year) was not having “any impact” on Kayak, the market leader in the US.
It was difficult for Hafner to not be smug given that Kayak was one of the founding members of the anti-Google lobbying group FairSearch, launched in aftermath of the initial announcement that ITA Software (which supplies flight shopping technology to Kayak and others) would be joining the Mountain View-based search giant.
Read full story at: http://www.tnooz.com/2012/10/09/news/google-flight-search-one-year-on-no-wonder-rivals-can-sleep-safely-in-their-beds-at-night/