ITA

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)

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After a shocking announcement this morning from Google regarding a $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility, most are already discussing what this means for the future of Android. However, a report from WSJ claims their sources are reporting Motorola has an “unusually large” 20% reverse termination fee in place that would see Google paying $2.5 billion if the deal falls through.

The report claims this might be proof Motorola is worried the acquisition could be the subject of antitrust regulators who are already investigating Google for its ability to abuse its market lead. However, Google execs noted in a conference call with financial analysts this morning that they aren’t worried about the deal being seen as anti-competitive in nature.

Why would the deal fall through? The report points to potential legal hurdles in Washington, similar to those that allegedly stopped a Groupon acquisition from happening. Google is already the subject of an antitrust probe related to their purchase of ITA software, and continues to be in the middle of intense legal battles with rival smartphone makers.

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Google has made it a little easier to find flights online by integrating flight information with their main Google.com search page. From now on, a quick summary of flights and airlines is displayed right on the results page for users in ten language markets (English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Brazilian Portuguese, Polish, Russian, Turkish and Catalan). You can also browse a full time-table of non-stop flights and search for non-stop flights from a particular airport.

Even though flight data comes from their ITA acquisition, Google Search does not currently use ITA’s search technology, a Google engineer Petter Wedum noted in a post over at the official Google Search blog. Right now it’s just a schedule, but obviously the ITS deal will pave the way to buying tickets online. Try this example search for flights from San Francisco to Minneapolis.