Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google Flight Search

google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 288 posts

Re: Google Flight Search

#251

Post by frankiewarren »

frankiewarren wrote: post #230
John212 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If your startup is involved with search aimed at the consumer market, watch out...Google is coming. Possibly... However sites like hipmunk will be used as a comparison in so many press articles and blog posts when google starts pushing this. Many start ups have won against google. Google Notepad & Evernote, Google Wave & Twitter, Google Ride Finder & Uber etc... .. but I still wouldn't want to be in this space righ…

Not entirely sure how you're equating Google Wave and Twitter.

I think Jaiku is the more apt comparison, for what it's worth.

Re: Google Flight Search

#252

Post by deong »

DevX101 wrote: post #75

If your startup is involved with search aimed at the consumer market, watch out...Google is coming. In a few weeks/months Google will be featuring this search result when you type "nyc to sfo" and take a big bite out of orbitz, kayak, and whoever's lunch that's in this space. EDIT: The counterargument to this, is that orbitz, kayak, and friends are some of the heaviest purchasers of PPC ads. So Google be at risk of c…

The problem with Google is that they don't seem interested in doing the hard work to go from 90% of the way there to a full product. It's like that with nearly everything they do. Often, it shows up as a US-only policy (flight search currently fits that bill). Other times, it's just random things. There are no Apps accounts for Google+. There's no "Tablet Optimized" section of the Android Market outside the US (and of course no books or movies either, but that's not their fault necessarily).

Most people aren't going to be interested in replacing something that works with something that sometimes works. Google might have a great flight search engine, but if I have to use Orbitz 30% of the time, I'll just use Orbitz. I already have an account set up there, and I can actually buy the ticket instead of having to find the flight, go to the airline web site, and search the flight again to buy it.

Re: Google Flight Search

#253

Post by skylar »

We built this at Yahoo! in summer 2007 after the FareChase acquisition. Took about a week or so to prototype, and a couple months to offer various filter/search criteria and prepare for launch. With access the good flight data APIs it's a pretty simple app. Of course for us it was never allowed to launch.

Glad to see Google was finally able to push something like this. Main feature missing that Y! Faremaps had is the ability to specify a span of time in which you wanted to travel and the cheapest trips in that timeframe were shown. Also, you could search "weekends only" in that timeframe.

Re: Google Flight Search

#254

Post by TeMPOraL »

kelnos wrote: post #179
throwaway32 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never said profit was their only motivation, but it is the reason they are a corporation, and not a charity. I refer you to the comment above by jey What Google "wants" as an entity is different from what the individual component humans want. Although Sergey is an obviously important influence at Google, he is not Google.

I never said profit was their only motivation, but it is the reason they are a corporation, and not a charity. Not necessarily. To parrot one of the other posters here: saying it doesn't make it true. You could also argue that being a charity would be a very slow and inefficient means to achieving many of the things Google has set out to do. Being a for-profit corp gets them there faster and with fewer distractions n…

An interesting take on the subject by pg:

http://www.paulgraham.com/good.html

"That was a surprising realization. Companies often claim to be benevolent, but it was surprising to realize there were purely benevolent projects that had to be embodied as companies to work."

Re: Google Flight Search

#255

Post by masklinn »

imorsi214 wrote: post #189
masklinn wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> except that Hipmunk's interface is a clean clone of ITA's matrix search's gantt view Why clean clone? Gantt charts are (technically) 115 years old, and it's not like there are 5 billion ways to display a gantt chart, especially one with no paths. Other flight search startup have independently stumbled upon the idea of gantt charts for flight, why could that not be yet another independent reinvention? > I'm sure it'…

They are the same as in yes, it's the same idea - a gantt chart but Hipmunk's way better looking and more interactive. When I say clone, I don't mean to imply they simply copied it with no originality - I'm just pointing out this fact to all the people who claim Hipmunk's advantage is their gantt view..which ITA already has a versin of and can be improved to match or be better than Hipmunk's.

> When I say clone, I don't mean to imply they simply copied it with no originality

That's what "cloning" implies though: making the exact same thing.

> I'm just pointing out this fact to all the people who claim Hipmunk's advantage is their gantt view..which ITA already has a versin of and can be improved to match or be better than Hipmunk's.

But have not so far, so Hipmunk's remains an advantage. You "could always" copy to match, in theory. Does not mean it's technically feasible, let alone easy. Or that you think it's a good idea.

Re: Google Flight Search

#257

Post by danssig »

breck wrote: post #62
bradleyland wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be honest. Google wants us to use their services because the better they understand us, the better they can advertise to us. That's the profit model at Google. I don't begrudge them for it either. You've got to turn a profit if you want to keep the lights on. I don't mean any offense, but the "Don't be evil" mantra is growing a bit tired. Evil is a strong word, and "not being evil" is a pretty low bar, IMO.

I strongly disagree. Google wants us to use its services because at its core is a bunch of engineers that simply want to make the world better.

Wow, wtff? I don't understand how people can get so up in arms about Apple fanboys so long as google has fanboys like this.

Are you serious or trolling? I would expect if someone had such an ignorant/naive opinion they would at least be smart enough to not let other people know.

Here's what I see from google:

Search - a product that helps them sell ads

Gmail - a product that helps them sell ads

Google App engine - A platform where they used the hype of MapReduce et al to get people to join and then ramped up pricing drastically after a lot of people had been on the service (a service for which switching away almost certainly means a big rewrite) for years

Android - phone OS to help them sell ads.

I'm not seeing a lot of "make the world better" in there. Unless you mean "for Google executives".

Re: Google Flight Search

#258

Post by sharmajai »

blub wrote: post #239
sharmajai wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am reminded time and time again how much "Don't be evil" mantra still holds for Google whenever other evil corporations do things like suing companies for looks of a product, primarily to hamper competition, and when they take cut out of sale made on their platform without adding any value whatsoever to the payment platform. When was the last time Google abused its set of patents to screw competition? There are so…

Stupid lawsuits about product looks are almost irrelevant to the society and individual. A centralized database of individual's profiles is a much more dangerous tool. Google's efforts to destroy the idea of online privacy are much more dangerous to society.

I think, google is the one protecting the idea of online privacy by not having stupid restrictions on exporting your own social data and by allowing the users to decide what gets shared with whom (circles).

And stupid lawsuits are not irrelevant to the society, they hamper competition which in turn hampers technological progress. If you think Samsung Galaxy Tab and Ipad look similar, just look again at their screens side by side the difference between PLS and IPS is day and night, it is unfortunate that the court does not deem that as differentiating enough.

Re: Google Flight Search

#259

Post by danssig »

abraham wrote: post #154
jey wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What Google "wants" as an entity is different from what the individual component humans want. (i.e. the agent 'Google' is distinct from the agents that it is composed of)

Google is strongly guided by the agents that shepherd it.

People still believe in a benevolent google after the App Engine scandal? Let me ask you something; what would Google have to do before you finally believe they're just a publicly traded company?

Re: Google Flight Search

#260

Post by danssig »

haberman wrote: post #148
throwaway32 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the first motivation of any for profit corporation, especially one as large and successful as Google, is profit. That is their entire reason for existence, don't fool yourself into believing otherwise.

People like to say this, maybe believing it fulfills some deep-seated need for cynicism, or makes the speaker feel wise and worldly. But what is your actual argument in support of this? Just saying it does not make it true. If profit is the only motivation for decisions at Google, why did it pull out of China? I'm sure you're cynical and wise about that too, but here's what I can tell you. I saw Sergey up on stage sa…

>why did it pull out of China?

Do you mean "why did they make a big rant about pulling out of China and then not actually do it until they were literally cyber-attacked by the government"? Google was never all that big in China anyway. I'm sure their whole strategy around this was to get gullible people to buy into the "Don't do evil" nonsense.

>Sergey up on stage saying the same things he said in this interview and he got fiery and emotional about it.

Yea? So do politicians. Very passionate about what they're talking about until it comes time to vote. Then they follow their wallets.

>This is a guy who grew up in the Soviet Union until he was 6 and for him it is a very personal and ideological issue.

I know plenty of people who grew up in the Soviet Union. What exactly do you think goes on there that makes the "lucky few" who escape want to change the world? Maybe it did have some profound effect on him but it sounds more likely to be simple positioning. Getting people to think he really cares will cause them to defend him every time his company betrays that trust.

>This corporations-as-profit-seeking-automata meme is old and tired. At the end of the day it's people who make decisions, and just as in every aspect of life people can have complex motivations for the decisions that they make.

It may well be old and tired but it's how the world works. The only thing a CEO can get in trouble for not doing is increasing share holder value.

You've been conned.

Post reply on HN