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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

#81

Post by sauwan »

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #58
primitivesuave wrote: post #6

Once their algorithm can predict prices to a certain level of accuracy, they can effectively offer investment hedging to the public for free, and use the publicity to drive commissions on referrals. Unlike other commodities whose value is subject to numerous economic forces, the pricing is set directly (by the airlines), and it is likely that simply by observing their pricing over time a sophisticated Google algorith…

But can't the airlines then introduce random price spikes into their own algorithm just to abuse Google?

Wouldn't it have to be a price drop for google to be out any money? It's a low price guarantee, so price spikes would only make them look good. Airlines aren't going to randomly drop prices to spite google...

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

#82

Post by londons_explore »

toper-centage wrote: post #11
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.

Google is so incoherent all the time that at this point it's the norm. Most projects are meant to last a couple years at best and then get shunned even if they had millions of users.

People get promoted in Google for designing a new amazing service and having a bunch of people use it.

Nobody gets promoted for maintaining a service.

So old services die because nobody wants to look after them. That won't change till Google reworks its employee incentives.

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

#83

Post by londons_explore »

kortilla wrote: post #30
minimaxir wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

During my business/tech econonomics class in college in 2010, one of the main course assignments was to argue for or against the ITA acquisition from a judicial perspective (i.e. would it create a monopoly). No one in the class could really argue against it because as far as monopolies that Google could possibly create, that's pretty minor. A decade later, almost everyone seems to have forgotten that Google did it.

>No one in the class could really argue against it because as far as monopolies that Google could possibly create, that's pretty minor. That’s really goofy reasoning. Just because google is huge and could do much more evil doesn’t mean that a small amount of evil (destroying the airline itinerary quote market) is ok. Is that what you meant to say?

The airline industry quote market is very much not dead though.... Skyscanner, kayak, etc...

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

#84

Post by londons_explore »

giarc wrote: post #56
Godel_unicode wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I read that I assumed that they want to observe the effect this guarantee has on pricing by changing people's booking behavior. Doing a time-limited study seems like a good way to do that.

I agree, but that seems like such a short window for an accurate assessment.

I bet its a "50% of flights" trial, so the data is more comparible.

If they have enough flight bookings per day, even a 1 day trial could be plenty to see how customers behave.

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

#85

Post by not_a_cop75 »

Sounds like Google is trying to dominate one more market. I'm sure they

1) wouldn't mind being the middle man of one more thing 2) continue to transmit travel plans and would be plans to whoever wants to pay.

Google is an advertising and information company.

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

#86

Post by scotradamus »

londons_explore wrote: post #74
obmelvin wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 hav…

Then google would buy all those tickets at the reduced value and resell them at the normal price.

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

#87

Post by londons_explore »

H8crilA wrote: post #46
jonknee wrote: post #44

Note that this is a temporary promotion: > Price guarantee is available between August 13th and September 2nd, 2019. You'll see the price guarantee badge on select flights where travel is completed by November 24th, 2019. Still sounds like a great deal, but this explains why it's not a huge liability.

It may be a test run. Flight pricing is complicated, Google may be reasonably worried about the unknown-unknowns.

Airlines can easily abuse this guarantee if they want to. The airline can calculate the loss Google would incur through any price change, and they don't necessarily incur the same losses. They can make price changes specifically to make sure Google flights doesn't make money.

This isn't the stock market - flights aren't transferable, since tickets are named.

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

#88

Post by henryfjordan »

londons_explore wrote: post #77
snovv_crash wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like a GDPR violation.

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

That's not strictly true. The GDPR contains language that potentially requires you to actually need the data you ask for to "enable" a feature. You could claim you need location to determine Temperature and Currency units for example, but not access to my contacts. Now, how all this holds up, I'm not sure

> Consent is presumed not to be freely given if it does not allow separate consent to be given to different personal data processing operations despite it being appropriate in the individual case, or if the performance of a contract, including the provision of a service, is dependent on the consent despite such consent not being necessary for such performance.

https://gdpr-info.eu/art-7-gdpr/ https://gdpr-info.eu/recitals/no-43/

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

#89

Post by baybal2 »

not_a_cop75 wrote: post #85

Sounds like Google is trying to dominate one more market. I'm sure they 1) wouldn't mind being the middle man of one more thing 2) continue to transmit travel plans and would be plans to whoever wants to pay. Google is an advertising and information company.

I hope it's not a plain fraud. For a part of my work in OEM industry, I do duties of a professional purchaser, so I know how to get deals.

I had many times such refund and guarantee promises thrown out of the window with explanation "so use us if you want." All kinds of booking agencies being the worst offenders.

One time when I still lived in Canada, I went to a small claims court, and and civil tribunal with "ahem..., commercial contracts are not our jurisdiction"

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

#90

Post by ww520 »

namdnay wrote: post #75
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

My credit cards have trip delay insurance to handle this kind of situation.
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