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Google agrees to buy ITA Software for $700 million

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Re: Google agrees to buy ITA Software for $700 million

#31

Post by bl4k »

amirmc wrote: post #23
vlad wrote: post #21

From the FAQ: ITA Software does not market a consumer oriented flight search site. That's probably not completely true. Matrix, although not a booking site, is one of the better flight search sites, allows consumers to find the cheapest time to leave and come back in a given month for a particular number of days of travel. http://matrix2.itasoftware.com

That's fantastic! Thanks for the link. I've been wondering if there was something like that for a while. I hope Google leave it as it is (or improve it).

Not only will they leave it, this is the most important part for Google. I expect that they will spin it into a 'Google Travel' product and take over the travel market pronto

Re: Google agrees to buy ITA Software for $700 million

#32

Post by hga »

sjbach wrote: post #26
jrockway wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard that the Python folks already drove most of the Lisp folks out. Lisp is only used for a very small part of their infrastructure, from what I've been told.

Not so. Most of QPX and RES is Lisp.

As I understand it, C++ to maintain the QPX in-memory database and SBCL to do the routing magic (which is even more non-trivial than you might think, e.g. a "best" result set is not 20 routes that are all within a dollar and that hit the same airports, etc. etc.).

RES uses Clozure CL (formerly OpenMCL, an evolution of Macintosh Common Lisp) for the stateless middleware with Oracle RAC for the backend and Java with the usual libraries for the web front end.

Re: Google agrees to buy ITA Software for $700 million

#33

Post by wglb »

jrockway wrote: post #11
Oxryly wrote: post #2

Waits for the inevitable "we're switching from Lisp to Python" announcement...

I've heard that the Python folks already drove most of the Lisp folks out. Lisp is only used for a very small part of their infrastructure, from what I've been told.

Unlikely that they will go away from lisp. They are heavy users of SBCL (performance) and CCL (fast compile) and have some interesting fraction of a million lines of lisp code and might just be one of the larger employers of lisp programmers.

See http://danweinreb.org/blog/the-failure-of-lisp-a-reply-to-br...

Re: Google agrees to buy ITA Software for $700 million

#34

Post by brlewis »

jrockway wrote: post #11
Oxryly wrote: post #2

Waits for the inevitable "we're switching from Lisp to Python" announcement...

I've heard that the Python folks already drove most of the Lisp folks out. Lisp is only used for a very small part of their infrastructure, from what I've been told.

A tip I picked up from one of pg's essays for finding out what technology a company uses: look at their job listings; they don't lie.

In the "Operations" part of the company it appears you're right, "most work is in Python": http://www.itasoftware.com/careers/jlisting.html?uid=718167

In "Engineering", Lisp tops the "particularly valuable" list at the bottom of "Knowledge and Skills" for http://www.itasoftware.com/careers/jlisting.html?uid=730130

Farther down the same page they ask you to solve puzzles. "Puzzles submitted in C++, Lisp, Python, Java or Perl will be reviewed most promptly, because those are the languages we use every day"

Re: Google agrees to buy ITA Software for $700 million

#35

Post by sjbach »

hga wrote: post #32
sjbach wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not so. Most of QPX and RES is Lisp.

As I understand it, C++ to maintain the QPX in-memory database and SBCL to do the routing magic (which is even more non-trivial than you might think, e.g. a "best" result set is not 20 routes that are all within a dollar and that hit the same airports, etc. etc.). RES uses Clozure CL (formerly OpenMCL, an evolution of Macintosh Common Lisp) for the stateless middleware with Oracle RAC for the backend and Java with th…

I'm a current ITAer working on QPX -- by lines of code, QPX is probably actually split pretty evenly between C++ and Lisp. But accounting for verbosity of C++, the logic is heavily on the Lisp side. I think anyone on my team would consider himself to be a Lisp developer before anything else.

Re: Google agrees to buy ITA Software for $700 million

#36

Post by jsz0 »

mkramlich wrote: post #10

This event will also have a chilling effect for some travel startups. Though maybe act as an accelerant for others. Either way it will impact almost every company in the travel space. (Assuming its not blocked by govt.)

I'm quite surprised that with some of Google's recent pickups more people aren't concerned about how it may negatively impact competition. We might get a better travel search out of this but I personally would have enjoyed seeing a company other than Google be successful at search for once. Same with AdMob -- Google is already a giant powerful advertising company. Not sure they really needed to gobble up AdMob to be successful there.

Re: Google agrees to buy ITA Software for $700 million

#37

Post by lg »

brlewis wrote: post #34
jrockway wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard that the Python folks already drove most of the Lisp folks out. Lisp is only used for a very small part of their infrastructure, from what I've been told.

A tip I picked up from one of pg's essays for finding out what technology a company uses: look at their job listings; they don't lie. In the "Operations" part of the company it appears you're right, "most work is in Python": http://www.itasoftware.com/careers/jlisting.html?uid=718167 In "Engineering", Lisp tops the "particularly valuable" list at the bottom of "Knowledge and Skills" for http://www.itasoftware.com/car…

we should add ruby to that.

Re: Google agrees to buy ITA Software for $700 million

#38

Post by bkrausz »

mkramlich wrote: post #5

gigantic move in the travel industry ITA runs behind the scenes at Orbitz and many other OTA's. saying it could cause problems for major players in the market would be an understatement. (I'm a former Orbitz and Cheaptickets engineer, as well as tech advisor to some travel startups)

They also power most of the meta search sites, which Google is easily positioned to become (and link to actual OTAs for booking). Huge conflict of interest.

However, ITA is not the only option out there, and given the concerns I bet everyone has with their contracts there's now room for another data provider to jump in and snatch up contracts during renegotiations.

A general rule of thumb I find valid is if there's some consumer-facing problem that can be solved with huge amounts of computation, Google will get into it. They certainly have the infrastructure for it.

(I'm a former TripAdvisor Flights engineer, which is owned by Expedia)

Re: Google agrees to buy ITA Software for $700 million

#39

Post by eru »

Alex3917 wrote: post #14

Hopefully Google will make flight search suck less. Currently even the most basic searches like "What's the cheapest I can fly from any airport within 50 miles of my house to any airport within 50 miles of NYC at any point during August" are impossible. I understand it's a computationally expensive question, but why the hell can't I just buy $5 bucks worth of computing time for an answer if I potentially stand to sav…

And you don't even need the cheapest option. Anything within 10$ of the cheapest option is probably OK. (Allowing approximations make the problem easier, at least in theory.)

Re: Google agrees to buy ITA Software for $700 million

#40

Post by KirinDave »

sjbach wrote: post #35
hga wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand it, C++ to maintain the QPX in-memory database and SBCL to do the routing magic (which is even more non-trivial than you might think, e.g. a "best" result set is not 20 routes that are all within a dollar and that hit the same airports, etc. etc.). RES uses Clozure CL (formerly OpenMCL, an evolution of Macintosh Common Lisp) for the stateless middleware with Oracle RAC for the backend and Java with th…

I'm a current ITAer working on QPX -- by lines of code, QPX is probably actually split pretty evenly between C++ and Lisp. But accounting for verbosity of C++, the logic is heavily on the Lisp side. I think anyone on my team would consider himself to be a Lisp developer before anything else.

It's so good to hear this. I'm always afraid that Python is going to squeeze out Lisp. It's a total absurdity, but people seem happy to learn Python and that puts a huge pressure on keeping Lisp shops alive.
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