Interview: The Puppet Master Pulling the Strings of Google Travel
Photo Credit: Richard Holden oversees the product teams at Google focused on travel, which include the Flights and Hotels offerings. Google
Skift Take
If you build it, and it is comprehensive and works at breakneck speeds, they will come. That's the mantra of Google, which is taking its sweet time to expand its flight and hotel partnerships around the world.
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It hasn't always been easy for outsiders to figure out who oversees Google's travel products, but finally we have an answer: It is Richard Holden, who focused on product management, mostly for AdWords, for about a dozen years, and about a year ago became product management director, Travel, reporting to Sridhar Ramaswamy, who heads Ads and Commerce.
Skift caught up with Holden to ask him how he views the progress and status of what loosely can be called Google Travel, which over the last fews years has benefited from the acquisitions of ITA Software, Zagat, and Frommer's, and introduced Google Flight Search and Google Hotel Finder.
Incidentally, as reported, Google's supposed licensing deal of Room77 technology was primarily a talent grab, he says. Meanwhile, big acquisitions i
