[chipsambos]

Some within the industry have been making noise that Google is quietly and slowly taking control of the whole trip funnel. Interesting read:

https://www.cartrawler.com/ct/digital-disruption/googles-ste...

I'd agree that providers are ceding too much control to Google for short-term wins, maybe without even realising the power they're handing over to Google.

Google is quietly inserting themselves between the customer and the business in all sorts of industries. They're not fully utilising that power which only makes them a benevolent (for now) dictator.

[IX-103]

Interesting that no one mentions that Google also runs the backend flight/hotel search used by most trip planning sites. They bought it (ITA) over a decade ago.

So all these providers already lost this power years ago and are just providing a fancy UX over Google's backend travel search service. Now Google is merging the two search engines and cutting out the middleman.

[Mauricebranagh]

The hotel /travel industry is probably the worst complainant as those industry's do a lot of sketchy stuff.

As does the insurance industry ever wonder why the UK insurance industry went all in on cuddly mascots - one factor was googles clamp down on black hat techniques simples