Unbundling Google
Ohio State University team creates first closed-world dataset for travel planning
When you book a trip:
25% of your hotel room price gets paid to an OTA
Online Travel Agents like Expedia take that revenue and use it to advertise on Google
20% of Google’s revenue comes from the travel sector
This relationship is so significant that small changes on the Search Engine Results Page have a huge impact, as evinced by Expedia owner Barry Diller’s rant at such a change.
