Google Travel

BusinessWeek is reporting that Google will be expanding its travel offering through enhancements to Google Maps. Travel search is an interesting vertical because there are a lot of ways to search for the same information. In addition, when searching to book travel, there can be significant price differences between sites, and of course, prices change on a regular basis. My personal favorite is Kayak.com, a travel search engine that searches multiple sites at once. For full disclosure, Comcast, my former employer, uses Kayak as its online travel partner. What differentiates Kayak from the online travel agents like Orbitz and Expedia is that you can book your travel through the travel provider's own website, many of which guarantee the lowest available rate. It is surprising that despite all of the advances online, there are still challenges to booking travel. It will be interesting to see if Google gets into the travel search space. So far, they have avoided this vertical, which BusinessWeek points out is a $90 billion+ global ad and sales market. My guess is that whatever they develop will offer more advertising opportunities, which is their core business.