For Google, being a search company no longer means just helping people to find websites. The little company Larry Page and Sergey Brin created in their spare time -- now a $130-billion (U.S.) colossus -- wants to help people find just about any kind of information, anywhere, any time.
Looking for books? Google Library is scanning them for you (amid a little controversy over copyright, mind you). Looking for real estate? Google wants to help you there too, using its Google Base indexing service. Looking for investment info? The search engine recently launched a financial portal.
If you're looking for travel information, however, pretty much all you get from Google at the moment is a list of Web pages, along with the usual string of ads that link to Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz and so on. But that could soon change.
Earlier this week, Russell Shaw -- a columnist and blogger at ZDNet -- noticed a classified ad on a job-listing site: Google was looking for a "Senior Account Executive, Travel." To Mr. Shaw and some other Google watchers, the description suggested that the California-based search giant was looking to enter the travel industry in a big way, perhaps even by building its own on-line travel "portal" to rival Expedia.
Google, of course, has denied having any such plans. And even one former travel industry insider says the classified ad means little. "They hire people like that all the time with ads like that," he says, explaining that it's probably just a regular ad executive who will work with existing ad buyers.
That's not to say the idea of Google launching a travel portal is without merit, however. On the contrary.
"I think it is coming, without a doubt, and it won't be long," says the industry insider, a former executive with an on-line travel service. For one thing, he says, Google has already shown signs of wanting to become a "portal" by launching Google Finance and building a real estate search function into its engine.
Not only that, but Yahoo -- Google's main competitor -- already has what amounts to a travel portal, called FareChase, which searches airline and hotel information from dozens of different carriers and services and then allows users to sort and filter that data before choosing who to book with. In other words, almost exactly the same thing Expedia does.
Another reason Google is likely to launch a portal is that travel is one of the biggest search categories.
According to a recent study by Hitwise, close to 10 per cent of all searches have to do with travel. And there is a further lure, one that might make it easier to take a step that is likely to irritate major customers like Expedia: The former travel insider says profit margins on the hotel side of the business are huge -- in the 25-per-cent range (the margins on airline flights are relatively tiny).
By becoming a one-stop travel information portal, Google could get a cut of those hefty margins, and suppliers such as hotel chains and airlines would no doubt be eager to pay less of their profits to Google than they are to Expedia and the other on-line travel agencies. Not only that, but Google could then work out a deal with those large agencies to promote their results on its all-in-one portal, in return for a hefty fee.
"This is not the imminent death of the on-line travel agencies," said the former travel executive. "But Google could end up holding on to a far greater portion of the travel search audience -- which they just forward on today to the travel agencies -- and that would allow them to 'sell' that audience to the highest bidder, or even cut out the middleman altogether."
Ironically, on-line travel agencies such as Expedia and Travelocity built their business on "disintermediating" the off-line travel market, or taking away the middleman. And now, Google and Yahoo threaten to do the same thing to them by removing them from the picture -- or at least making it a lot more expensive to maintain their share of the market.
