Get away with Google Flights • Hacker News Board

Re: Get away with Google Flights

#111

Post by jordigh » Wed, Feb 25, 2015, 8:40 PM UTC

MichaelGG wrote: post #105

jordigh wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How is it that we were able to land a man on the moon over 45 years ago and we still can't just type in a search engine and get the cheapest flights from point A to point B on certain dates? Because the airlines have their own army of geniuses working very hard to make sure that this is difficult to do: http://www.cheapair.com/blog/travel-tips/air-fares-101-why-d... Who are you? How much money do you have? How badl…

Wow. So as a United "elite" member, just doing searches on their app or site but with my account, is gonna cost me? Because I've never seen this happen. I seem to get the lowest fare they have. I've not done serious tests, just seen when other people look up my flights, on say, Kayak, they get the same prices.

Try browsing for tickets with and without private browsing enabled, and from different geographic IP addresses, from different computers, and different websites (cheapair, Expedia, Orbitz...). You should definitely see a fluctuation in prices, for the same seats. I always do.

It may well be that elite members get lower prices, as this may be the way for the airline to maximise their profit off you. Their algorithms are quite inscrutable, intentionally so.

Re: Get away with Google Flights

#112

Post by teddyh » Wed, Feb 25, 2015, 8:48 PM UTC

dheera wrote: post #38

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the same reason I can't just renew a domain at Network Solutions without going through eight different pages trying to upsell me things (and often defaulting to checking on those services). Expedia, Orbitz, etc make money via nag screens and upsells. They have no incentive to make the experience positive or easy. Google seems to.

I switched to Namecheap; they sell stuff but are not annoying about it. Google Domains also looks promising but I'm waiting for them to not be in beta lest they decide to scrap the product. Google would win me over if they offered free SSL certificates. In fact I think they should go ahead and disrupt the SSL industry by doing that too. Nobody should have to pay for a silly cryptographic signature. That would disrupt…

> […] if they offered free SSL certificates. In fact I think they should go ahead and disrupt the SSL industry by doing that too. Nobody should have to pay for a silly cryptographic signature.

Mozilla is doing this very soon: see https://letsencrypt.org/

Re: Get away with Google Flights

#113

Post by Marazan » Wed, Feb 25, 2015, 8:57 PM UTC

radiorental wrote: post #32

Don't know where they're getting their data from. Boston-dublin in Oct is over $1300 on google flight with Aerlingus Same flight directly on the airline's website is $940. Good luck with that, Google.

I presume they are over-aggressively caching data.

Re: Get away with Google Flights

#114

Post by Marazan » Wed, Feb 25, 2015, 9:02 PM UTC

dheera wrote: post #48

mobiplayer wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is my understanding that they contact various providers in real-time, so they give them a time window to come back with their data.

Yeah, this is terrible engineering design IMHO. The providers should just provide some kind of firehose of updates to the booking websites which can then cache the data appropriately. Also they should fix their cache implementations. I've had countless times on the AA website where it says a ticket is available; then when I try to book it it says it's not available; then when I go back to the home page and search aga…

A firehose of updates? Updates to what?

There are basically an unlimited number of world wide routes - a mind blowingly dizzying number of permutations to get from A to B.

Before you try to say "well travellers won't want routes with feature X" to cut down on the volume of data travellers want all sorts of contradictory things. Some a vastly price sensitive, some hate a particular airline, some love that same airline, some are time sensitive, some change those preferences depending on whether they are flying domestic or international, with or without kids.

Re: Get away with Google Flights

#115

Post by nathancahill » Wed, Feb 25, 2015, 9:43 PM UTC

dheera wrote: post #53

kylec wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good presentation about the complexities in creating and pricing itineraries: http://www.demarcken.org/carl/papers/ITA-software-travel-com... Most companies don't want to take on this complexity, so they outsource it. The companies that provide this service, like ITA, tend to charge more money for more expensive queries, like multi-day searches, so most online search companies will only let you do the cheap…

I wonder if it would be viable to start an airline whose business model is "simple pricing". Just forget ITA altogether, sell tickets directly, and have the pricing model extremely simple. Like, total price = C/(time to departure) for some constant C, and use machine learning, or just a simple PID feedback loop on revenue to set C in order to be profitable.

You pretty much described Southwest Airlines.

Re: Get away with Google Flights

#116

Post by nso » Wed, Feb 25, 2015, 9:53 PM UTC

That notification about avg. delays is an absolute killer feature.

http://i.imgur.com/Nb0EYDh.png

Re: Get away with Google Flights

#117

Post by FireBeyond » Wed, Feb 25, 2015, 10:24 PM UTC

toyg wrote: post #104

dingaling wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Airlines are not one of them, afaik Oh the big consolidated IATA airlines are raking it in, don't worry about them "On a per passenger basis, [IATA] airlines will make a net profit of $7.08 in 2015. That is up on the $6.02 earned in 2014 and more than double the $3.38 earnings per passenger achieved in 2013." http://www.iata.org/pressroom/pr/Pages/2014-12-10-01.aspx Incidentally, Ryanair are frequently not the chea…

$7 on a ticket costing hundreds is hardly "raking it in".

How much -profit- should they be making?

Re: Get away with Google Flights

#118

Post by penetrarthur » Wed, Feb 25, 2015, 10:28 PM UTC

I would love GF to have a feature where you select a departure airport and arrival airport and dates, and make GF find me where to go in between. Like a search with multiple cities but so that you decide the departure city of the first flight and the arrival city of the second flight.

Re: Get away with Google Flights

#119

Post by gohrt » Wed, Feb 25, 2015, 10:46 PM UTC

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #22

gringocl wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an awesome platform, if only you could purchase through this!

Their plan is probably to enable it at some point.

Matrix has been running 10 years already.

Re: Get away with Google Flights

#120

Post by isthisforme » Wed, Feb 25, 2015, 10:47 PM UTC

nadams wrote: post #62

dheera wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I switched to Namecheap; they sell stuff but are not annoying about it. Google Domains also looks promising but I'm waiting for them to not be in beta lest they decide to scrap the product. Google would win me over if they offered free SSL certificates. In fact I think they should go ahead and disrupt the SSL industry by doing that too. Nobody should have to pay for a silly cryptographic signature. That would disrupt…

> ...free SSL certificates. In fact I think they should go ahead and disrupt the SSL industry StartSSL already offers free SSL certificates - and they haven't disrupted the industry. Even if Google started offering free SSL certificates - it's only a band-aid to the problem not a solution.

Have you tried using StartSSL?? (a) They aren't free if you are doing anything 'commercial' (b) I decided to try and give them my money. I tried very hard. I gave up.

After uploading your documents 30 times, them claiming they didn't get them, you would too.

Oh, and uploading them each time was pretty painful.