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Google to Offer a Best Price Guarantee on Certain Flights

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Re: Google to Offer a Best Price Guarantee on Certain Flights

#71

Post by halflings »

aaronarduino wrote: post #5

> To see your trips and travel research, turn on these settings: Private results, Web & app activity This is the main reason why I will never be able to use www.google.com/travel. I used to use the Trips app with no search history, but Google is shutting down Trips in favor of forcing people to loosen privacy settings. It is very disappointing because Trips worked very well.

How do you want Google to show you your trips and your travel research (e.g search queries) if you disable search history?

If you don't want to see your search history (since you seem adamant on disabling it), then just use the other features on google.com/travel (destination/hotel/flight search).

Re: Google to Offer a Best Price Guarantee on Certain Flights

#73

Post by namdnay »

ghobs91 wrote: post #54
Alex3917 wrote: post #16

If the airlines know that most of tickets for a flight have been sold via Google, then what's to stop the airlines from drastically dropping the price of the last ticket just to cost Google a ton of money? There's no way this could work if the airlines were in a legitimately adversarial relationship with Google.

A) Why would they be in an adversarial relationship with Google? B) What benefit do they get from doing something like this?

The airlines are in a very adversarial relationship with Google. They're scared that google will take away their direct distribution channel by being better than they are.

Re: Google to Offer a Best Price Guarantee on Certain Flights

#74

Post by londons_explore »

obmelvin wrote: post #65
lordnacho wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any algo that does this will know what noise is.

Exactly, noise can be removed or heavily in many problems and in this case you would then just upset regular customers.

That's not quite what this is.

The 'best price guarantee' guarantees the customer will receive the lowest price for their ticket. Google will refund them if anyone gets a lower price.

The airline can release, for 30 seconds only, a much lower price. Then Google has to refund all their customers, and the airline might only sell a handful of tickets at the lower price.

Remember airline tickets aren't fungible. They have names attached, and can't be resold, so nobody can buy up thousands of tickets in a price dip and resell.

Re: Google to Offer a Best Price Guarantee on Certain Flights

#75

Post by namdnay »

ww520 wrote: post #51

I would never book flight or hotel through 3rd party portal unless there's a substantial discount. Booking direct work better 90% of the time.

Depends. What about if your flight is a day late and the hotel don't want to reimburse the missed night? If you'd booked through an agency, you could have both on the same reservation and be covered for that type of stuff

Re: Google to Offer a Best Price Guarantee on Certain Flights

#77

Post by londons_explore »

snovv_crash wrote: post #40
mediumdeviation wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, same as my new Pixel. Apparently to be able to give me temperature in Celsius instead of Fahrenheit, Google would like to know every app activity and usage as well as everywhere I have been. This sort of privacy bundling really should not be allowed.

That sounds like a GDPR violation.

As long as it's declared upfront, it's legit.

Re: Google to Offer a Best Price Guarantee on Certain Flights

#78

Post by JMTQp8lwXL »

JakeTheAndroid wrote: post #61
JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #50

I recently searched for flights via Google Flights (for Frontier). The price shown for the exact same itinerary was ~$50 more on Google Flights than when I used my smartphone on a different network (disabled WiFi), going directly on Frontier's website. This could be because Google counted for things like, for example, 1 checked bag when comparing all flights. I don't have enough knowledge on the matter, but I will ab…

counter to that, I was looking at flights yesterday and Google Flights and compared it directly to the airlines prices on their site. I saved nearly a grand.

How could that be? I'd imagine Google Flights isn't giving you a discount to use them.

Re: Google to Offer a Best Price Guarantee on Certain Flights

#79

Post by [deleted] »

snovv_crash wrote: post #40
mediumdeviation wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, same as my new Pixel. Apparently to be able to give me temperature in Celsius instead of Fahrenheit, Google would like to know every app activity and usage as well as everywhere I have been. This sort of privacy bundling really should not be allowed.

That sounds like a GDPR violation.

[deleted]

Re: Google to Offer a Best Price Guarantee on Certain Flights

#80

Post by londons_explore »

ehsankia wrote: post #43
acomjean wrote: post #4

Google putting the finishing touches om the ITA software acquisition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITA_Software But oddly closed google trips, which frankly was decent. Google sometimes seems like incoherent.

I've been using Google flights and trips features for years and never had the Trips app. I am using it right now, for my current trip. The data propagates through assistant and maps and so on. I got an automatic notification about my flight delay and I can see my hotel reservation right on maps. The Trips app may have been nice for having it all in one place, but it definitely wasn't a necessary part of the experienc…

I like it as a user, but I really think it's Google applying a "data monopoly" to my life.

The fact I use Gmail allows them to make Google maps and Google assistant better products than say bing maps and Cortana, because bing maps and Cortana could never get access to those reservation emails which make the whole thing work.

Such monopolies should be illegal - everything should be sharable via an API. Sadly those seem to have gone out of fashion with things like Cambridge Analytica.

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