Google's New Travel Engine 'Google Flights" Takes Off

Google has been running at full speed lately, launching its new social network, Google+, and moving to acquire Motorola Mobility and Zagat. Now, Google has quietly launched the company's online Google travel engine, called Flight Search. The tool offers basic flight information and pricing, and may ultimately become a competitor to Kayak and Travelocity, both of which are online sites that offer discounted fares and flight information. The launch of Google Flight was not a big surprise, considering the company acquired ITA software for $700 million in April, and threatened rivals including Kayak petitioned regulators to block the deal. You can access Google's Flight Search by visiting google.com/flights or by searching basic flight information in Google’s main search engine. Google's new feature displays a list of flight options and daily deals. Users of Google's Flight Search can explore different destinations, and filter searches by airline, flight time, destination and price. Or, they can look at the map to see where different flights will take them for different prices. Flights selected as featured are currently based on cost and total travel time, but also include different departure times and different airlines. Kayak said the company isn't afraid of Google and doesn’t see them as a competitive threat. Kayak made a statement to TechCrunch in which they said, “We're confident in our ability to compete, and we believe our flight search technology is superior. We recognize Google is a formidable competitor but they haven't been successful in every vertical they've entered."