On both sides of the pond, regulators and companies alike are scratching their heads about how to handle the search giant’s move up the trip-planning funnel
Even as the European Union (EU) has been deciding that Google had gone too far, the giant group is moving further into travel. Koddi, a Texas-based travel metasearch management platform, has noticed that Google is checking if travellers would like it to search and book vacation rentals! So, Google is seeking to spread its mega-travel presence there, too. Hardly surprising given the surge in popularity of the rental economy!
“We are seeing a filter on some searches that allows a user to proactively filter down to ‘only’ vacation rentals”, alerted Koddi (three weeks ago). Right now, this appears to be triggered for certain cities – there is no option, as yet anyway, for San Francisco, for example, but for Paris and Berlin there are.
Koddi also adds that “notable vacation rental providers like Airbnb, VRBO and HomeAway are currently missing, though one has to wonder if they will be for long”.
Having entered more and more areas of the travel market through the introduction of Flight Search in particular, Hotel Finder and Hotel Ads, as well as the optimisation of Google Maps for hotel bookings, it obviously wants more. Google seems to be proactively seeking out demand for specific products while staying under the radar.
Google knows what customers are looking for and is in a very strong position to deliver it. Having an enormous market share in both search and Android provides it with an overwhelming advantage.
Coincidentally at the same time as Koddi’s news, the EU was fining it €2.4 billion, deciding after a seven-year investigation that it has abused its internet search monopoly.
