Google Flights Gets Aggressive by Intercepting Airline Trademarks
Photo Credit: Google Flights, which is Google's comparison shopping business for airlines, is appearing very prominently in Google search when consumers search for a specific airline. Google
Skift Take
Google is aggressively placing itself more prominently than ever between the consumer and the airline in the quest for bookings. What does it mean? Airlines are getting more qualified leads but are losing control and getting even more beholden to Google.
Google has been getting increasingly aggressive with its Google Flights product over the last year. If you talk to Google's competitors, they'll tell you that Google Flights, without fanfare, is taking assertive steps and is indeed making market share gains at the expense of competitors.
One such move is intercepting consumer searches on Google for a specific airline like "united flights to chicago" and displaying a Google Flights result at the top -- or near the top -- of the page instead of delivering a direct, free link to United.com or an online travel agency selling United tickets. So Google is transforming a search for a trademarked term like an airline's name and turning it into money for Google.
Google Flights knows the consumer's location and closest airports, fills in dates, and presents a United nonstop fare "from $117." When the consumer selects "More Google flight results," the consumer navigates to Google Flights and sees a curated list of United flights, incl
