Google launches Travel search, with help from its ITA acquisition

Google has launched Travel search which will debute across select cities today. The new search is the first product to emerge from ITA, a company Google acquired in April. The new Travel search uses similar methods that you’re used to in traditional Google search. As you can see, a simple search like “flights from New York to San Francisco” returns results under the “flights” category.

With the flights category, flights that pertain to your search will be displayed — where you can see the airline and then purchase tickets. Users are then guided to the airline’s website to actually book the flight.

More screenshots after the break: (via Search Engine Land)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OC2bUYVkjrY]

As of now, there isn’t anything exactly ground-breaking about this product. But, as Search Engine Land mentions, there is room for expansion that would be ground breaking. Google could incorporate data from their existing services. The ability to incorporate Street View of hotels and reviews of local businesses would definitely be features worth putting in (and of course there is always more).

The new product is for sure useful, but we’d just like Google to throw some of their “special sauce” on top — which we expect them to do eventually.