What Google's Partnership With Ryanair Really Means to the Future of Booking
Skift Take
Is Google on the cusp of destroying Skyscanner, Kayak and Expedia in one fell swoop? We've heard that kind of hyperbole before, and few obituaries have been written. That being said, it would seem premature for Google to swap out Google Flight Search for something new when the product is so young.
Ryanair's Michael O'Leary notoriously doesn't mind stirring things up and he did so over the weekend in an interview, where he said that Google wants to launch a price- comparison service, with Ryanair participating, that will "blow comparison sites like Skyscanner out of the water."
Sometimes O'Leary creates a firestorm based on his own version of reality.
Ryanair is the Southwest Airlines of Europe, refusing to share its fares online with other websites. There has been conjecture for months that Ryanair, seeking to attract more business travelers and to counter EasyJet's gains amidst Ryanair's outbreak of niceties, would opt for a broader distribution policy.
So a decision to give Google access to the Irish airline's fares, while a dramatic change, would not be totally unexpected.
The potentially big news in the O'Leary interview was that Ryanair would be offering pricing "thr
