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Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Kayak, Expedia, Sabre unite to lobby against Google/ITA merger
By Galen Moore
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Kayak Software Corp. of Concord, has joined two travel search giants in a lobbying consortium to fight Google Inc.’s (Nasdaq: GOOG) pending $700 million acquisition of Cambridge-based ITA Software Inc.
Kayak, Expedia Inc. (Nasdaq: EXPE) and Sabre Holdings Corp. (owners of Travelocity) have formed FairSearch, the companies announced in a press release this morning, with the goal of urging the U.S. Department of Justice to block the ITA-Google deal. ITA makes flight search technology used by Kayak and several other travel-search sites.
“Acquiring ITA Software would give Google control over the software that powers most of its closest rivals in travel search and could enable Google to manipulate and dominate the online air travel marketplace,” the FairSearch press release reads.
Google announced in July that the DoJ is investigating the Google-ITA deal. A DoJ challenge would set back a major exit for five private-equity firms, including four based in Massachusetts. Battery Ventures of Waltham, General Catalyst Partners of Cambridge, PAR Investment Partners of Boston, Sequoia Capital of Menlo Park, Calif., and Spectrum Equity of Boston invested $100 million in ITA in 2006, 10 years after the company’s founding.
Expedia, along with Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT), previously cried foul on the deal in September.
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