Print
Email
Print Edition Stories
MHT's Emerging Technologies Forum: Health IT and the Cloud
IBM aims to make wireless sensors easy to code
MHT's Julie Donnelly: Colleges see uptick in interdisciplinary programs
Google Inc.’s (Nasdaq: GOOG) $700 million planned acquisition of ITA Software Inc. is making waves among the cluster of search-related technology companies in the Boston area. The move may have a direct impact on ITA customers in the region, like Kayak Software Corp. of Concord. It also expands Google’s footprint in the region by at least 460 employees, more than tripling its Massachusetts headcount. Implications for search technology in general will be felt well beyond New England’s tech industry.
We sought out three regional search technology company CEOs to handicap the deal, and what it means for search in Boston and beyond.
Steve Papa
CEO/Founder
Endeca Technologies Inc.
Enterprise Search
ITA’s venture investment – a $100 million round closed 10 years after the company’s founding as a fare-search software maker – was intended to build out back-end ticketing systems for airlines. Endeca CEO and founder Steve Papa says the acquisition’s impact on the region’s search software cluster (where Endeca is one of the largest players) will depend on what Google decides to do with that technology.
ITA was more than just search: ITA was trying to build out all the different functions an airline would need. How much of that other stuff is relevant to Google? If it is, are they going to build up application infrastructure? I suspect that’s not the case. I suspect it’s what we see at face value. There’s two scenarios: one where this signals a further investment to growing the size of ITA - or you won’t see that. You’ll see a bunch of functions start to get smaller (at ITA).
Tom Wilde
CEO
Ramp Inc.
Video search
Tom Wilde, CEO of BBN Technologies spinoff Ramp (formerly known as EveryZing), said the ITA acquisition underscores the value of metadata in an expanding range of Internet sectors. Map data was first, underscored by Nokia Corp.’s $8.1 billion purchase of Navteq Corp. in 2007. E-commerce and entertainment are the next hot areas, Wilde predicted.
Google continues to believe that controlling the data is vital to the business. Nobody at the top of the food chain wants to be beholden to somebody else for the data. A lot of these data companies, I don’t think the value was necessarily seen as they came out. Kayak is frequently mentioned today in the articles about ITA because Kayak is at the consumer end of the value chain using data to create a business. All the customers of ITA are suddenly a bit at risk because Google could decide to raise the prices for that data.
Mark Watkins
CEO/co-founder
Goby Technologies Inc.
Travel and entertainment search
Goby Technologies Inc. has built a semantic search engine for travel and entertainment, based on technology developed by database entrepreneur Michael Stonebraker. CEO and co-founder Mark Watkins said the acquisition points to a user shift toward generalization in search.
We view it as validation. People’s information-seeking behavior is moving toward search and that’s starting to happen in travel. I think they’re moving away from the walled-garden model of, ‘I’m going to go to my favorite travel media site and get my recommendations there.’ They’re starting to look at tools that have a more comprehensive view of the information.
On the industry side I think it changes the playing field a lot. If I were Kayak or if I were one of the big travel sites like Travelocity I’d be scared. The danger is they’re going to get disintermediated. Travel is a commodity. Commodities are sold by the biggest brand. Google has a very big brand. It’s just economies of scale.
Add your comment, and share it via Facebook, LinkedIn, Yahoo and more. Edit your Disqus profile settings.
RSS Feeds
