Spotted, Google Travel (AKA Troogle )
Monday, 12 June 2006
Wow, it's amazing what you can find on Google these days.
All that travel information. Actually that's not a real screenshot, it's a mockup based the great services the Google has been providing for ages; but if they did do a Travel portal I'd expect it to look a bit like above.
The point is, that there is a shocking amount of what you'd think would be in a travel portal already available direct through the OneBox if you know where to look, and given that most of Googles traffic around 80% according to Hitwise only use the main search pages that's one powerful piece of real estate. The clever thing Google does is drop it in so subtlely that they don't get labled with the whole 'portal' badge or upset their user experience.
Great post - very funny! I blogged on the likelihood of "Troogle" several months ago - in fact I thought I had coined the term! Looking at downstream visits from Google, I noticed that Travel was the vertical that was most likely to get Google's attention next. You can read the post here http://weblogs.hitwise.com/heather-hopkins/2006/03/google_finance_launched_is_goo.html
Posted by: Heather Hopkins | Tuesday, 20 June 2006 at 12:27 PM
So you're the culprit, I wondered who came up with that name ;-)
What we were hinting at is that travel actually already does get a lot of attention, but they just sneak it through under the radar. No doubt at some point they will inevitably bundle these and some additional services together as a portal offering though.
Posted by: Teddie | Thursday, 22 June 2006 at 11:01 AM
The new Google Checkout http://checkout.google.com in its terms and conditions https://checkout.google.com/seller/content_policies.html specifically disallows sale of "Travel packages and offers - Tours (including hotel, flight, and car reservations), travel clubs, and timeshare properties".
Hmmmm....
Posted by: David Petherick | Thursday, 29 June 2006 at 12:44 PM