Google rolled out its Hotel Finder service, which is called as an experiment in finding the perfect hotel. Users can input a location, date for check-in and check-out, and the price range of the hotel. They can also choose the class and rating of the hotel.
Hotel Finder also lets users search via shape, where the users can outline the boundary of the search area. This feature is similar to Yahoo’s Sketch-A-Search, a technology that the company launched in 2010.
Hotel Finder is similar to Google Places in a way except it only gives out hotels in its search results. It could be a complementary service for its ITA travel integration. The new service is not a beta but is considered an experiment.
Google announced that it has plans to acquire ITA for $700 million in July 2010. It specializes in organizing airline data such as availability, flight times, and prices. Google said that acquiring ITA will help it produce new flight search services to simplify the process of comparing different options, searching for available flights, and buying tickets. The deal was recently approved by the Justice Department.
Hotel Finder is a good way to promote Google’s AdWords. After reading the reviews made by other users for hotels, the person can click on a drop-down menu for listings from Expedia, Travelocity, and other review sites.
A poll made last October showed that 63 percent believed that ebook readers have decreased the profits of print books while 22 percent of book sellers believed that ebook readers decreased their sales. 70 percent of those surveyed said that ebook readers would affect the sale of new books than used books.
