New Google travel search: not ready for prime time

Already a giant and still gulping new outlets, Google last year paid $700 million to buy search software firm ITA, which provides flight information. Five months later, with much hoopla, Google announced it was offering a new Flights Search feature.

You might think competitors would be scared of Google, but you would be wrong.

The reaction has been at best tepid or at worst: highly critical.

"This is just an early look: the takeoff — not the final destination," Google says on its blog in announcing the product.

Google claims its Flights Search feature gets fastest results, a simple list of the most relevant flights and other information.

And the site says improvements will come later, but critics think they should be already here.

Travel commentator Larry Olmsted in Forbes Magazine says the site is not yet ready for prime time.

“The anticipated Google flight search engine launched with much fanfare the other day, and I am already sick of it,” he writes. “I’ll preface this by staying I am in no way anti-Google and use their excellent search engine all the time.”

He said he looked easy so he gave it a try. But for some unknown reason, the site forced him always to use Albany, NY, as his departure airport. That happened despite repeated tries. Even when he deleted Albany, it kept re-appearing. He also could not complete a search for a one-way flight.

“Best of all, when I tried to submit a comment to Google for feedback that might help them, I was directed to log into a Google Mail account. Apparently you cannot comment on how poorly the interface works if you do not use Google Mail. So I have another idea. I am commenting right now, through this forum,” he writes.

Carroll Rheem at PhoCusWright said initially Google’s new service did not disappoint because it featured “near supernatural speed and a clinically clean interface.” But at launch, “the inner workings understandably have a lot of holes.” Rheem added that Google was expected to improve the site in the near future.

“Here we have a company that has built a reputation and a workforce aimed only at one thing: building great products for consumers,” writes Evan Konwiser inTnooz. “And suddenly it is faced with the same shenanigans that OTAs, GDS, and airlines are dealing with everyday, fighting on all fronts for the rights to revenue and inventory, and dealing with huge uncertainty.”

“In the end, it’s not yet clear whether ITA’s amazing search capability with significant industry baggage will be a net positive or a liability to Google.”

By David Wilkening