Yesterday October 5th 2011, Google Inc. (GOOG)’s $700 million purchase of travel-information company ITA Software Inc. was cleared by a federal judge after the search-engine company agreed to conditions imposed by the U.S. government.
U.S. District Judge Robert Wilkins stated he was acting in “the public interest” when he approved Google’s purchas of ITA if they agreed to make travel data available to other search engine rivals, and allowed the US Government to review any complaints it is acting unfairly.
This purchas brings Google closer to it’s world domination by allowing true access to realtime flight data from companies leveraging the ITA software packages. And in their typical style Google is already moving. The logo on ITA’s website already claims “ITA Software by Google”, their Flight Search is still rolling (but also still only for US data), and according to and email from Adam Kovacevich to Bloomberg.com ““We’re excited about the new features and tools we’re already developing for our users with ITA Software”
Watch out travel planning start ups (Hopper), Google’s plan for world domination is coming after you!