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Priceline.com acquires Kayak for $1.8B

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Re: Priceline.com acquires Kayak for $1.8B

#61

Post by patrickod »

scotth wrote: post #59
casca wrote: post #55

Kayak and Hipmunk get a lot of praise for their UI but if you want to use a hacker interface for finding flights, http://matrix.itasoftware.com/ is the way to go. It's not as pretty, but is incredibly feature-rich, not limited to the US and regularly finds me prices that are significantly cheaper than anyone else.

Have you tried out Google Flights? I've been told it's based on this same technology, and has a much better UI. And be sure to click around. It has some interesting tools, like prices for flights to your destination flown out of nearby airports.

I believe that ITA software is owned by Google. They license it to others as well.

Re: Priceline.com acquires Kayak for $1.8B

#62

Post by johnbenwoo »

yawgmoth wrote: post #50

Since everyone seems to be putting in their 0.02$ on which sites they use for booking, bing.com/travel is also very good. The buy-wait prediction is fantastic.

That was from their acquisition of Farecast, which was a great product - glad it's still surviving post-MSFT acquisition

Re: Priceline.com acquires Kayak for $1.8B

#63

Post by mherdeg »

casca wrote: post #55

Kayak and Hipmunk get a lot of praise for their UI but if you want to use a hacker interface for finding flights, http://matrix.itasoftware.com/ is the way to go. It's not as pretty, but is incredibly feature-rich, not limited to the US and regularly finds me prices that are significantly cheaper than anyone else.

It was a sad, sad day when they shut down the old http://matrix1.itasoftware.com/ interface. It was much more keyboard accessible with faster navigation between inputs, and the forward and back buttons always did exactly what I expected. Also really miss the "weekend search". It was a really great service, but I guess it wasn't exactly making them money.

Re: Priceline.com acquires Kayak for $1.8B

#65

Post by koeselitz »

casca wrote: post #55

Kayak and Hipmunk get a lot of praise for their UI but if you want to use a hacker interface for finding flights, http://matrix.itasoftware.com/ is the way to go. It's not as pretty, but is incredibly feature-rich, not limited to the US and regularly finds me prices that are significantly cheaper than anyone else.

Kayak, Hipmunk, Google Flights, Orbitz, and almost every other aggregator licenses ITA Software's system, actually. And most major airlines use it internally. It's good enough that it's pretty much the de facto standard and framework.

Re: Priceline.com acquires Kayak for $1.8B

#66

Post by thezilch »

antoko wrote: post #10

Kayak is great (was?) but Hipmunk is more than up to the task of filling the void if Priceline ruin Kayak. Congrats to the Kayak folks I guess, when they got into the industry they really raised the bar. Before Kayak I remember having to use Expedia and Orbitz and just having to accept their crappy UI because there simply were no alternatives.

http://www.google.com/flights/?hl=en&gl=us#search;f=LAX;...

versus

http://www.hipmunk.com/flights/LAX-to-SFO#!dates=Nov09,Nov16...

I respect what Hipmunk is trying to do, but I really doubt they are filling voids outside of "this" community. I find it much harder to scan, slower to load, and having lower quality tools for finding alternate (or cheaper) fares.

Re: Priceline.com acquires Kayak for $1.8B

#67

Post by TillE »

antoko wrote: post #10

Kayak is great (was?) but Hipmunk is more than up to the task of filling the void if Priceline ruin Kayak. Congrats to the Kayak folks I guess, when they got into the industry they really raised the bar. Before Kayak I remember having to use Expedia and Orbitz and just having to accept their crappy UI because there simply were no alternatives.

I see Hipmunk still doesn't track budget airlines in Europe (eg, EasyJet).

Which makes it fairly useless to me, and absolutely not a replacement for Kayak.

Re: Priceline.com acquires Kayak for $1.8B

#68

Post by photorized »

calbear81 wrote: post #34
jngreenlee wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like it, I've been looking for something like this. Some features (dreaded feature creep!) I'd love: 1. Map interface with little lines from my home base airport to the possible destinations - It's just fun to see. 2. Sliders to increase/decrease budget - Dynamically adding/removing routes as I change the $$ limit. Maybe these would only take another weekend to add?

kayak.com/explore solves this problem for ya.

no it doesn't, not for me or anyone I know at least. I can elaborate.

Re: Priceline.com acquires Kayak for $1.8B

#69

Post by jarek »

hluska wrote: post #57
taumeson wrote: post #4

Fun fact: Both are located in Norwalk, CT., about a 5-10 minute ride from each other. Priceline is located almost on the Darien border and Kayak is nestled in South Norwalk (SoNo). I gotta believe this proximity lead to board member and executive coziness.

I can't escape the feeling that that fun fact is why stories like these have hit the wires: http://zlkdocs.com/KYAK-Info-Request-Form-463 To save you from reading that document, a law firm has decided to 'investigate' whether Kayak's board "breached their fiduciary duties to stockholders by failing to adequately shop the Company before entering into this transaction and whether priceline.com Incorporated is underpayi…

Breach of fiduciary duty lawsuits are very common for all major acquisitions. For the law firm it's high potential reward with relatively little downside. The mere fact of one or two being filed means pretty much nothing.

Re: Priceline.com acquires Kayak for $1.8B

#70

Post by TillE »

thezilch wrote: post #66
antoko wrote: post #10

Kayak is great (was?) but Hipmunk is more than up to the task of filling the void if Priceline ruin Kayak. Congrats to the Kayak folks I guess, when they got into the industry they really raised the bar. Before Kayak I remember having to use Expedia and Orbitz and just having to accept their crappy UI because there simply were no alternatives.

http://www.google.com/flights/?hl=en&gl=us#search;f=LAX;... versus http://www.hipmunk.com/flights/LAX-to-SFO#!dates=Nov09,Nov16... I respect what Hipmunk is trying to do, but I really doubt they are filling voids outside of "this" community. I find it much harder to scan, slower to load, and having lower quality tools for finding alternate (or cheaper) fares.

I tried the Google tool...

"Sorry, flights from Germany are not currently supported."

"Sorry, flights from Italy are not currently supported."

"Sorry, flights from United Kingdom are not currently supported."

Wonderful. I can find flights from New York to London, but not vice versa.

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