Ryanair wins screen scraping case against Booking.com in US court ruling • Hacker News Board

Re: Ryanair wins screen scraping case against Booking.com in US court ruling

#251

Post by listenallyall » Tue, Jul 23, 2024, 2:53 AM UTC

s1artibartfast wrote: post #101

amelius wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> According to Booking Holdings (Booking.com)'s latest financial reports the company's current revenue (TTM ) is $22.00 B. In 2023 the company made a revenue of $21.36 B an increase over the years 2022 revenue that were of $17.09 B (from a google search)

Is that 1% or 100% of their market? Did they turn a profit?

Booking.com reported net income of 4.2 billion in 2023. More than American Airlines ($822 million), United ($2.6 billion) and almost as much as Delta (4.6 billion). Meanwhile Booking.com has no planes, no hotels, no rental cars, no inventory of anything, really.

https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/bkng/financial...

https://news.aa.com/news/news-details/2024/American-Airlines...

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/UAL/united-airline....

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/delta-air-lines-full-2023-103...

Re: Ryanair wins screen scraping case against Booking.com in US court ruling

#252

Post by remram » Tue, Jul 23, 2024, 3:00 AM UTC

heavyset_go wrote: post #243

chrisjj wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And pretty soon afterward, every one of those login page will be circumvented by a bot signup.

Don't worry, you'll need to upload your photo ID to be able to login and do anything online.

People who run bots have IDs.

Re: Ryanair wins screen scraping case against Booking.com in US court ruling

#253

Post by listenallyall » Tue, Jul 23, 2024, 3:10 AM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #177

gumby wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow! Shows I’m living under a basket.

Those numbers did not answer any of your questions. They are doing significantly better than the main competing travel agent website: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/BKNG/booking-holdi... https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/EXPE/expedia/marke... What I always find interesting is middlemen businesses that don’t do any of the risky and laborious work, such as operating hotels and airlines and car rental…

> You would think the internet would especially be able to split ...

If it isn't obvious yet, the enormous reach and scale of the internet does the exact opposite, it basically guarantees consolidation. Booking and Expedia each used to be 4 or 5 independent companies. The booking engines wield power by de-listing any operators who offer lower prices anywhere else, and none of the hotel chains can risk not appearing on the sites, even more so when there are only two.

Re: Ryanair wins screen scraping case against Booking.com in US court ruling

#254

Post by shiroiushi » Tue, Jul 23, 2024, 3:55 AM UTC

nicoburns wrote: post #247

shiroiushi wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the answer is for the US government to not regulate these things, but instead somehow allow the EU to regulate them on US soil. (No, I have no idea how that would work legally.) Because when the EU regulates things like this, the result is usually pretty good. But when the US regulates things, it turns into regulatory capture and only helps the big corporations at the expense of everyone else. It's a bit like u…

And of course it's circular: The US doesn't do things like well because Americans don't trust their institutions and think governments are inherently corrupt and ineffective, so they think might as well join in (and then perpetuate that corruption/ineffectiveness).

> think governments are inherently corrupt and ineffective, so they think might as well join in (and then perpetuate that corruption/ineffectiveness).

Sounds like the way countries typically considered "corrupt" probably work. But for some reason, Americans don't like to think of their country as being as corrupt as someplace like [random central American country], despite evidence to the contrary.

Re: Ryanair wins screen scraping case against Booking.com in US court ruling

#255

Post by lotsofpulp » Tue, Jul 23, 2024, 4:01 AM UTC

listenallyall wrote: post #253

lotsofpulp wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those numbers did not answer any of your questions. They are doing significantly better than the main competing travel agent website: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/BKNG/booking-holdi... https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/EXPE/expedia/marke... What I always find interesting is middlemen businesses that don’t do any of the risky and laborious work, such as operating hotels and airlines and car rental…

> You would think the internet would especially be able to split ... If it isn't obvious yet, the enormous reach and scale of the internet does the exact opposite, it basically guarantees consolidation. Booking and Expedia each used to be 4 or 5 independent companies. The booking engines wield power by de-listing any operators who offer lower prices anywhere else, and none of the hotel chains can risk not appearing o…

The hotel chains can get together and offer a website showing lower prices to their rewards members.

In fact they did, called roomkey.com Hilton/ihg/marriott/hyatt/choice/wyndham options could all be searched simultaneously, and you get the lowest price and the hotels avoid paying commission to Expedia and booking.

But they shut it down. I wonder if it was because hotels are usually franchised, and the brands get a percentage of revenue as royalty, so they don’t care about commissions the hotel operators have to pay. So they decide to price discriminate via the travel agents.

It should be similarly trivial for the airlines and car rental companies to get together and offer the same website. Isn’t it better to give customers a 7% discount rather than give booking/Expedia 15%?

Obviously, reality is different so there must be a reason. I’m guessing the gains from price discrimination are more than the losses from commissions.

Re: Ryanair wins screen scraping case against Booking.com in US court ruling

#256

Post by carlosjobim » Tue, Jul 23, 2024, 4:03 AM UTC

amelius wrote: post #82

arghwhat wrote: post #22

> A jury in the District Court of Delaware unanimously found that Booking.com violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse act and that it had induced a third party to access parts of Ryanair's website without authorisation "with an intent to defraud," the verdict said I imagine this is limited to a scenario where you: 1. Act as a middle-man for the transaction (as this lawsuit was about resale), 2. Interfere with pricing o…

> (The highly variable and discriminatory pricing of travel would also best be addressed in regulation, rather than relying entirely on third-party resellers to rescue you.) How difficult would it be to destroy Booking.com's entire businessmodel or at least their grip on the market?

Destroying their business model is impossible, because both customers and hotels want it. Destroying their grip on the market (I assume you mean accommodation and not flights) would be by offering a better service.

Re: Ryanair wins screen scraping case against Booking.com in US court ruling

#257

Post by carlosjobim » Tue, Jul 23, 2024, 4:17 AM UTC

codedokode wrote: post #99

jdietrich wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Virtual credit cards are an established financial technology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_payment_number IP addresses are a tradeable commodity.

To issue virtual card numbers you must be a bank, right?

No, eligible businesses can do this through Stripe for example.

Re: Ryanair wins screen scraping case against Booking.com in US court ruling

#258

Post by carlosjobim » Tue, Jul 23, 2024, 4:28 AM UTC

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #56

I had always assumed Booking.com had some resale agreement with hotels and airlines - there was always some weird issue where if I called a hotel and asked for a room it was more expensive than booking.com or was not available yet was on booking.com What gets me is why on Earth any provider would allow this - dealing direct is so much more sane 99% of the time, and a package holiday provider already has a reseller ag…

Hotel owners like working with booking, and yes, they have resale agreements with all hotels and other accommodation providers they list on their website.

Re: Ryanair wins screen scraping case against Booking.com in US court ruling

#259

Post by ryanisnan » Tue, Jul 23, 2024, 5:08 AM UTC

SoftTalker wrote: post #96

arghwhat wrote: post #22

> A jury in the District Court of Delaware unanimously found that Booking.com violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse act and that it had induced a third party to access parts of Ryanair's website without authorisation "with an intent to defraud," the verdict said I imagine this is limited to a scenario where you: 1. Act as a middle-man for the transaction (as this lawsuit was about resale), 2. Interfere with pricing o…

We used to regulate air travel. It was a lot more expensive then.

According to a recent video by 74gear, airline prices have for the past many-years been heavily subsidized by credit card deals airlines sell.

Apparently this part of the biz is taking a bit of a nosedive, and he expects airline prices to skyrocket to compensate for the loss in revenue.

Re: Ryanair wins screen scraping case against Booking.com in US court ruling

#260

Post by throwaway2037 » Tue, Jul 23, 2024, 5:42 AM UTC

sureIy wrote: post #198

deanCommie wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boosting this. I recently tried to use Expedia to book a flight from Vancouver to Toronto on Porter Airlines because then I could use my TD Reward points. The default prices that showed up in the results looked the same on Expedia or directly on Porter, so it didn't seem like I was losing anything. Except that base flight included no carry-on and no checked-baggage, which I needed to do. On Porter directly fixing tha…

It can go both ways. Pros of Expedia: - they have my card - their website does not suck as much as the airline’s - they let me cancel within 24/48 hours for free and immediately The second point can be a huge selling point and it applies to a lot of OTAs. Every time I try to book direct “because it’s best” I easily spend triple the time and sometimes I get fleeced anyway (oh, here’s a $5 convenience fee for using a c…

    > Every time I try to book direct “because it’s best” I easily spend triple the time

I have a similar experience. As a result, I have not booked a flight directly on the carrier's website in years. Do only suckers use the carrier's website now, because the prices and/or service are always worse? Sigh.