Google to Offer a Best Price Guarantee on Certain Flights • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by jgalt212 » Sat, Aug 10, 2019, 12:42 AM UTC

aclimatt wrote: post #152

listenallyall wrote: post #141

Say what you want about Google/Alphabet as a whole, but Google Flights is incredible. It's absolutely amazing how quickly and largely that Google crushed all its competitors in terms of usability. Kayak, Hipmunk, Orbitz, Skyscanner were all my go-to's at one point but G.Flights is far superior in so many ways. It actually remembers your airline preference between searches. You don't have to beg or change settings to…

I agree that its real-time inventory and pricing availability has been a total game changer in the UX department. Presumably their acquisition of ITA gave them the ability to respond to queries in real-time which enabled all of the (quite excellent) features you pointed out above. There's just one problem -- because a ton of the data is cached, or precomputed, or however it's done, a substantial and frustrating amoun…

> Presumably their acquisition of ITA gave them the ability to respond to queries in real-time which enabled all of the (quite excellent) features you pointed out above.

Perhaps, but I was never impressed with Orbitz during its heyday. I remember watching a Google tech talk* about how hard a problem it is to give the searcher a viable set of options to chose from. However, in my experience, the viable set of options always seemed to include a 23 hr layover with with multiple connections that was $200 cheaper than the nonstop option, and various single connection 1hr layover options about $150 cheaper than nonstop. At the time, both Expedia and Travelocity offered a more reasonable set of options.

* can't seem to find it right now. Will post if able to locate later.

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

#172

Post by CydeWeys » Sat, Aug 10, 2019, 12:45 AM UTC

guiambros wrote: post #151

listenallyall wrote: post #141

Say what you want about Google/Alphabet as a whole, but Google Flights is incredible. It's absolutely amazing how quickly and largely that Google crushed all its competitors in terms of usability. Kayak, Hipmunk, Orbitz, Skyscanner were all my go-to's at one point but G.Flights is far superior in so many ways. It actually remembers your airline preference between searches. You don't have to beg or change settings to…

(disclaimer: I work at Google, but no relationship with the Flights team other than as an individual user) Funny story: just last week I was booking a complicated multi-city trip with 5 legs, multiple countries, etc. I tried several times via united.com, and it wasn't showing me any flights available in one of the legs (which I knew they had a codeshare agreement). I went back to Google Flights, chose all my flights,…

Sounds like a P/NP-type problem. It's quite a hard problem to calculate all possible permutations of routings and schedules across 5 cities ("NP"), and United's system clearly isn't up to snuff for it, while Google's is.

But validating and pricing any single itinerary is a trivially easy problem ("P"), so United can handle that no problem. It can't come up with the itinerary, but given a particular one, it will sell it to you.

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

#173

Post by xur17 » Sat, Aug 10, 2019, 12:47 AM UTC

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #126

mav3rick wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google flights charges no middleman fee. It definitely would have added a carry on. you can easily remove it

I don't know why they wouldn't start charging a middleman fee someday. What other value would they get from building Google Flights?

I've never been given the option to book directly through Google flights - I don't think they offer that option, so I'm not sure how they would charge a middleman fee.

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

#174

Post by wildrhythms » Sat, Aug 10, 2019, 1:09 AM UTC

dastx wrote: post #155

listenallyall wrote: post #141

Say what you want about Google/Alphabet as a whole, but Google Flights is incredible. It's absolutely amazing how quickly and largely that Google crushed all its competitors in terms of usability. Kayak, Hipmunk, Orbitz, Skyscanner were all my go-to's at one point but G.Flights is far superior in so many ways. It actually remembers your airline preference between searches. You don't have to beg or change settings to…

> Google Flights is incredible. It's absolutely amazing how quickly and largely that Google crushed all its competitors in terms of usability. Really? I've yet to see a flight be cheaper or close to what the likes of Kayak and Skyscanner have provided.

I'm always curious about where these sites source their prices from. Do the airlines provide a backend with real-time prices? Are they scraped from the frontend? Do these sites sell at a loss sometimes in "guaranteeing" a lower price?

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

#175

Post by asciimike » Sat, Aug 10, 2019, 1:15 AM UTC

jgalt212 wrote: post #171

aclimatt wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that its real-time inventory and pricing availability has been a total game changer in the UX department. Presumably their acquisition of ITA gave them the ability to respond to queries in real-time which enabled all of the (quite excellent) features you pointed out above. There's just one problem -- because a ton of the data is cached, or precomputed, or however it's done, a substantial and frustrating amoun…

> Presumably their acquisition of ITA gave them the ability to respond to queries in real-time which enabled all of the (quite excellent) features you pointed out above. Perhaps, but I was never impressed with Orbitz during its heyday. I remember watching a Google tech talk* about how hard a problem it is to give the searcher a viable set of options to chose from. However, in my experience, the viable set of options…

The talk you're looking for is probably this: http://www.demarcken.org/carl/papers/ITA-software-travel-com...

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

#176

Post by pb7 » Sat, Aug 10, 2019, 1:43 AM UTC

grecy wrote: post #159

listenallyall wrote: post #141

Say what you want about Google/Alphabet as a whole, but Google Flights is incredible. It's absolutely amazing how quickly and largely that Google crushed all its competitors in terms of usability. Kayak, Hipmunk, Orbitz, Skyscanner were all my go-to's at one point but G.Flights is far superior in so many ways. It actually remembers your airline preference between searches. You don't have to beg or change settings to…

It's funny, I've had exactly the opposite experience. Multiple times flying from random places in Africa to Australia return, and Australia to Canada, GFlights was at least $1k more than the cheapest on kayak or orbitz. Maybe GFlights just doesn't show overly cheap options..?

Google Flights won’t show all OTA options, primarily the ones with unreliable reputations. SkyScanner, for example, will scrape the bottom of the barrel to find options to save that final couple of bucks (which is perfectly fine) but if you have problems with the ticketing post-booking, you will wish you didn’t go that route.

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

#177

Post by ulfw » Sat, Aug 10, 2019, 1:44 AM UTC

dastx wrote: post #155

listenallyall wrote: post #141

Say what you want about Google/Alphabet as a whole, but Google Flights is incredible. It's absolutely amazing how quickly and largely that Google crushed all its competitors in terms of usability. Kayak, Hipmunk, Orbitz, Skyscanner were all my go-to's at one point but G.Flights is far superior in so many ways. It actually remembers your airline preference between searches. You don't have to beg or change settings to…

> Google Flights is incredible. It's absolutely amazing how quickly and largely that Google crushed all its competitors in terms of usability. Really? I've yet to see a flight be cheaper or close to what the likes of Kayak and Skyscanner have provided.

You are right. In fact Google flights is regularly missing some airlines. Also the flights I found are often great on Google but then not available when actually trying to book, making the site quite a bit useless.

What sets it apart is the UI and fast search. But I guess with fast searching (caching) comes inaccurate results. It’s a thin line.

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

#178

Post by cracauer » Sat, Aug 10, 2019, 1:45 AM UTC

aclimatt wrote: post #152

listenallyall wrote: post #141

Say what you want about Google/Alphabet as a whole, but Google Flights is incredible. It's absolutely amazing how quickly and largely that Google crushed all its competitors in terms of usability. Kayak, Hipmunk, Orbitz, Skyscanner were all my go-to's at one point but G.Flights is far superior in so many ways. It actually remembers your airline preference between searches. You don't have to beg or change settings to…

I agree that its real-time inventory and pricing availability has been a total game changer in the UX department. Presumably their acquisition of ITA gave them the ability to respond to queries in real-time which enabled all of the (quite excellent) features you pointed out above. There's just one problem -- because a ton of the data is cached, or precomputed, or however it's done, a substantial and frustrating amoun…

ITA's customers before the Google acquisition were not interested in sharing large infrastructure that would make contiguous querying (as opposed to on demand when a consumer searches), presumably mostly for cost reasons.

The QPX search engine is actually the same behind Google flights and all the airlines and what Orbitz used to use. The limitation pre google/flights was the on-demand querying only.

Now the contiguous querying, obviously, gives you a load of useful historical data. After running it for a couple of years now they seem to feel confident that they can predict prices changes with enough accuracy that the payouts for misses will be an acceptable price for the publicity, or increased use of their other travel products.

(disclaimer: ex-ITA/Xoogler, opinions my own)

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

#179

Post by jmathai » Sat, Aug 10, 2019, 2:54 AM UTC

acchow wrote: post #147

londons_explore wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most of them either still use old versions of ITA software (it was sold like traditional software, not an ongoing license), or they're rolling their own.

how do you know this?

Sabre[1], ITA and others. (Worked at one of Hipmunk, Kayak, Expedia, etc)

[1] https://beta.developer.sabre.com/guides

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

#180

Post by leereeves » Sat, Aug 10, 2019, 2:55 AM UTC

evrydayhustling wrote: post #149

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it is likely that simply by observing their pricing over time a sophisticated Google algorithm has "learned" the airline's less sophisticated ones Simple systems acting in concert are devilishly complex. (Former algorithmic trader.) Counterparties' systems fail. They misfire. They get confused by the weather and interns punching in parameters wrong. Internal dynamics, like someone stretching to hit a goal or gettin…

Does anyone know enough about airline pricing to deconstruct the risk here? Are providers like Google required to disclose the underlying airline price, so Google is absorbing your risk of regret on that? If not, and Google has discretion in what to quote, isn't this guarantee really just a promise not to offer you a better price later?

It seems to me that Google probably expects to lose some money, but they've decided it's worth it to buy some market share for their new product.