I am one of those who likes to organize vacations from start to finish and every year the search begins in the same place: flights. Skyscanner is my reference website, but now a tough competitor has just emerged. Google just launched its AI flight search engine worldwide and it does so at a striking moment in which the European Union accuses it of abuse of a dominant position, precisely because enhance your travel tools.
Google flight deals
The truth is that they haven’t put much thought into naming their new tool. Flight offers or Flight Deals live within the already known Google Flights. If you enter, you will see a notice that tells you “Do you have flexibility? Discover the best flight deals with AI”, from there you can access this new search section.
You can do searches like this.
Instead of having the classic fields of origin, destination and dates, here we only have a text field where we can do searches with natural language. For example, I have asked you to suggest cheap destinations where you can eat well for a few days of vacation that I have at the beginning of the year. We can also fine-tune with various filters such as passengers, the class in which we want to fly or if we do not want to make stopovers.
I find it to be a pretty useful tool if, like me, you have a few days off and aren’t sure where to travel. Instead of looking at destination by destination, you can give it the key information and let it search for you. Of course, there is still room for improvement. In my case, he has not clearly understood the dates on which I can travel (I told him between January 1 and 5 and he suggested flights starting on the 5th).
Skyscanner gives us the option to select “anywhere” as a destination and then filter by price. The results are very similar to those we obtain with Google’s proposal, but Flight Offers allows us to make a flexible and at the same time more specific search. In Skyscanner it only allows us to enter the exact date or explore an entire month.
Google’s tentacles and dominant position
Google entering new market niches is not something new. The company’s strategy involves integrating more and more functions into its search engine and offering specific search and comparison tools, even if it means threatening the business of others.
We have the most recent and striking case with the AI Overview integration in the search enginewhich is reducing visibility to the media from which this AI draws to give its answers. The result has been traffic drops of up to 50%but Google keeps going and they have even launched the AI Mode.
If we look back, there have been many more similar cases. In the early 2000s there were many websites where we went to make currency or unit conversions, but when Google integrated it directly into the search engine, there was no longer a need to enter those websites.
There are cases that have ended in fines for Google. This is what happened when they started showing Google Shopping results at the top, burying the results from other websites. The European Union ended up fining the company for 2.4 billion of dollars for abuse of dominant position. Also They had to pay 465 million euros to Idealoone of the platforms affected by these changes.
In the spotlight
The announcement of Flight Offers comes at a somewhat delicate time. Google is being investigated for a new antitrust case in the European Union, specifically in the online travel sector. He is accused of unfairly favoring services like Google Flights and Google Hotels in the search results. The fine could reach up to 10% of your annual income.
Google responded to the accusations and made changes to their services to comply with the Digital Markets Act, also known as DMA. Among these changes was the inclusion of a box at the top with links to specialized platforms, hotels and airlines. However, Google took the opportunity to show its disagreement, ensuring that these requirements harm European consumers because it forces them to use “cumbersome solutions.”
Images | Google
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