1script - 5:48 pm on Dec 11, 2012 (gmt 0)

Anyone in the online travel business should take notice if they haven't already.

Well, let's see: Larry has just declared a war on online travel sites. How much money do you think they spend on AdWords and what would happen if they switch to Facebook ads or Bing for that matter? If you start alienating people by entire industries, pretty soon you won't have enough money to pay for the upkeep of your Boeing 767

Another aspect of this Google business model blown out of proportions is the fact that Google is severely understaffed to provide anything resembling the (very basic as it is) level of customer support and logistics that all these companies combined provide now. Google does not have their own expertise in anything other than the very specialized branch of computer sciences and experience in building humongous data centers. All their "knowledge" in that "Knowledge Graph" is scraped from other sites. How in the world could you have so much hubris to slap in the face the very people you depend on?

The most depressing thought is that he may be able to get away with it for some time. At least until they start to buckle under pressure and the public opinion turns on them. It can be years, can be overnight - you never know. You overextend your reach so much that anything can snap anytime. Somebody at Expedia may know someone at FTC or in Congress who may not like Google's monopolistic tendencies. 30 years ago the CEO of AT&T must also have been thinking the world is his for the taking. Turned out the world didn't like that idea...