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Google agrees to buy ITA Software for $700 million

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Re: Google agrees to buy ITA Software for $700 million

#51

Post by gnuvince »

lg wrote: post #37
brlewis wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A tip I picked up from one of pg's essays for finding out what technology a company uses: look at their job listings; they don't lie. In the "Operations" part of the company it appears you're right, "most work is in Python": http://www.itasoftware.com/careers/jlisting.html?uid=718167 In "Engineering", Lisp tops the "particularly valuable" list at the bottom of "Knowledge and Skills" for http://www.itasoftware.com/car…

we should add ruby to that.

We really shouldn't.

Re: Google agrees to buy ITA Software for $700 million

#53

Post by jurjenh »

hga wrote: post #28
jey wrote: post #3

Is it just me or does that sound cheap? Though I'm sure Google has a far better idea of ITA's revenues than we do. CrunchBase says they had a $100MM Series A round in 2006, but they've been around since 1996.

ITA has a big problem: their follow on to the QPX product that everyone has been talking about is a airline reservation, management etc. system called RES. This is desperately needed since pretty much everyone is running these systems on expensive mainframes with ugly old code bases. Dan Wienreb did a very interesting talk, "Lisp for High-Performance Transaction Processing" that covered it and a bit on the future of…

That, and google has an aversion to common lisp... so it would need to be a rewrite.

EDIT: Mind you, I've only heard of the aversion to lisp, so have no data to back my claim up. That said, it has been mentioned several times on HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1282583 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=363023

Re: Google agrees to buy ITA Software for $700 million

#57

Post by ra »

hga wrote: post #28
jey wrote: post #3

Is it just me or does that sound cheap? Though I'm sure Google has a far better idea of ITA's revenues than we do. CrunchBase says they had a $100MM Series A round in 2006, but they've been around since 1996.

ITA has a big problem: their follow on to the QPX product that everyone has been talking about is a airline reservation, management etc. system called RES. This is desperately needed since pretty much everyone is running these systems on expensive mainframes with ugly old code bases. Dan Wienreb did a very interesting talk, "Lisp for High-Performance Transaction Processing" that covered it and a bit on the future of…

"with Oracle RAC as the backend (pretty much the only choice)"

... not any more!

Re: Google agrees to buy ITA Software for $700 million

#58

Post by yewweitan »

hga wrote: post #28
jey wrote: post #3

Is it just me or does that sound cheap? Though I'm sure Google has a far better idea of ITA's revenues than we do. CrunchBase says they had a $100MM Series A round in 2006, but they've been around since 1996.

ITA has a big problem: their follow on to the QPX product that everyone has been talking about is a airline reservation, management etc. system called RES. This is desperately needed since pretty much everyone is running these systems on expensive mainframes with ugly old code bases. Dan Wienreb did a very interesting talk, "Lisp for High-Performance Transaction Processing" that covered it and a bit on the future of…

Good points. You're probably right than it'll get spun off given the technologies behind it. I have to ask though, how much of this is a result of technological inertia as opposed to cultural inertia?

Re: Google agrees to buy ITA Software for $700 million

#59

Post by rivo »

hga wrote: post #28
jey wrote: post #3

Is it just me or does that sound cheap? Though I'm sure Google has a far better idea of ITA's revenues than we do. CrunchBase says they had a $100MM Series A round in 2006, but they've been around since 1996.

ITA has a big problem: their follow on to the QPX product that everyone has been talking about is a airline reservation, management etc. system called RES. This is desperately needed since pretty much everyone is running these systems on expensive mainframes with ugly old code bases. Dan Wienreb did a very interesting talk, "Lisp for High-Performance Transaction Processing" that covered it and a bit on the future of…

It's not the first project that I have seen that was cancelled. Building a PSS (RES and/or INV) is not a small thing, given that there is so much complexity in the airline industry which has to be supported. I think it would be very exciting if Google continued these developments. Some of the major players (e.g. 1A) are in a quasi-monopoly and they definitely exploit that. More competition would be good. (But I agree, I don't see why Google would want to compete.)

Btw, many of the PSS vendors already have or are currently in the process of renewing their "expensive mainframes with ugly old code bases".

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