The real question is who paid for this article - Parallels or VmWare :-) Kidding.
Orbitz shows costlier hotel options to Mac users
41–50 of 145 posts
Re: Orbitz shows costlier hotel options to Mac users
#42Good business model. Exploiting the higher disposable income / lower intelligence of mac users for profit is awesome =)
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Re: Orbitz shows costlier hotel options to Mac users
#43I also find this fascinating. As someone involved in creating recommendation systems for web sites based on various user behavior signals, I can see adding a "what type of browser do they use" and "what type of OS do they use" intelligence in the future to further segment users. Mac ownership must be a proxy for "household income". Brilliant.
Would be easy enough to compare prices on windows/linux in a vm on my mac though. And take note of the companies that do it. Something else to add to comparison services as well, aka does site xyz.com discriminate based on os/browser?
Important note: the prices are not different. Just that more 5-star hotels are shown in the search results to Mac users. If they were charging more for the same hotel, it would be evil not brilliant. :)
Re: Orbitz shows costlier hotel options to Mac users
#44Inevitably, this will make people like me (Mac user that considers $50 a night overpriced) book through other sites. Does orbitz think I only price through them? Most people I know price at least a half dozen locations before deciding, so as long as everyone doesn't jack prices for Mac users, Mac user's business will naturally migrate to whomever doesn't try to screw us.
Re: Orbitz shows costlier hotel options to Mac users
#45Good business model. Exploiting the higher disposable income / lower intelligence of mac users for profit is awesome =)
I see you're a new user: this type of comment is, by consensus and executive decree, not welcome on Hacker News. If you don't have something genuinely novel to contribute to the conversation, please do your part to keep the noise low.
> by consensus and executive decree
Man, some people around here really love the 'sound' of their own text.
Re: Orbitz shows costlier hotel options to Mac users
#46I wonder how Linux users are profiled.
They're redirected to this: http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/torval....
Re: Orbitz shows costlier hotel options to Mac users
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see you're a new user: this type of comment is, by consensus and executive decree, not welcome on Hacker News. If you don't have something genuinely novel to contribute to the conversation, please do your part to keep the noise low.
> by consensus and executive decree Man, some people around here really love the 'sound' of their own text.
Hell, I love the sound of his text.
Re: Orbitz shows costlier hotel options to Mac users
#48Inevitably, this will make people like me (Mac user that considers $50 a night overpriced) book through other sites. Does orbitz think I only price through them? Most people I know price at least a half dozen locations before deciding, so as long as everyone doesn't jack prices for Mac users, Mac user's business will naturally migrate to whomever doesn't try to screw us.
It's only the default sort, though, which I already usually think of as an attempt to either guess my preferences, or game some kind of referral system on their part (even if I don't normally assume it's based on OS choice). If you want to sort by objective factors like Price or Distance, you can still do that fine, which is what I normally do.
Re: Orbitz shows costlier hotel options to Mac users
#49I'm cofounding a startup in the travel space and our cofounder has a lot of domain expertise and according to him it's illegal to show a rate lower on Expedia than say Marriott.com. There are exceptions as always, but for the most part this is true. Now I don't know if this applies to the opposite..I guess you could just add to a price but I still would think that's fishy. Anyway, just a little tid bit of knowledge.
Edit: Turns out they prices weren't different, just showing pricier results first.
Re: Orbitz shows costlier hotel options to Mac users
#50I'm cofounding a startup in the travel space and our cofounder has a lot of domain expertise and according to him it's illegal to show a rate lower on Exedia than say Marriott.com. There are exceptions as always, but for the most part this is true. Now I don't know if this applies to the opposite..I guess you could just add to a price but I still would think that's fishy. Anyway, just a little tid bit of knowledge.