Google Flights Could Shift Strategy After Heavy Layoffs
Photo Credit: Layoffs at Google Flights could signal strategy changes in Google's flights business. A Royal Air Maroc 787-8 Dreamliner in OneWorld livery at JFK Airport on January 2, 2023. Flickr.com / Mark Bess
Skift Take
Why doesn't Google promote Google Travel as a one-stop shop? The layoffs at Google Flights show there's too much ad revenue in play on the Google.com side of the flights business to merit such an all-in approach.
Especially heavy layoffs at Google Flights, including senior managers and engineers who joined Google with the ITA Software acquisition in 2011, could signal strategy shifts in the company's multifaceted airline business, Skift has learned.
Any modifications to Google's airline strategy could potentially have implications for airline partners, global distribution systems Sabre and Amadeus, metasearch rivals such as Kayak and Skyscanner, as well as travelers.
Google delivered its largest layoffs ever — about 12,000 employees, or around 6 percent of its full-time workforce — 10 days ago, and it is believed that firings at Google Flights, which had 100 or more employees on its engineering team alone, reached 10-12 percent.
The cuts at Google Flights especially impacted people who previously worked at ITA Software, which became the foundation of Google Flights, and also Google's enterprise flights platform, which today powers e-commerce at airline web
