Google Pushes Ai Into Flight Deals As Antitrust Scrutiny, Competition Heat Up

Google connected Thursday announced a caller AI-powered hunt instrumentality to thief travelers find formation deals — moreover arsenic regulators proceed to mobility whether nan hunt giant’s power successful recreation find stifles competition.

Called Flight Deals, nan caller instrumentality is disposable wrong Google Flights and is designed to thief “flexible travelers” find cheaper fares. Users tin type earthy connection queries into a hunt barroom — describing really and erstwhile they want to recreation — and nan AI surfaces matching options.

These queries tin beryllium for illustration “week-long travel this wintertime to a metropolis pinch awesome food, nonstop only” aliases “10-day skis travel to a world-class edifice pinch caller powder,” Google said successful a blog post.

The instrumentality uses its AI models to understand nan nuances of what users are looking for and past goes done unrecorded Google Flights information to show applicable results, nan institution said.

Regulators, including nan European Commission, are currently investigating really Google whitethorn beryllium favoring its ain hunt products — including Google Flights — successful ways that harm competition. EU regulators are eyeing Google for enforcement nether nan Digital Markets Act, aiming to rein successful nan powerfulness of awesome tech platforms. In response, nan Alphabet-owned portion is reportedly readying to propose changes to appease regulators, including nan summation of a price-comparison container successful hunt results.

Initially, Google has brought Flight Deals successful beta, pinch plans to rotation it retired successful nan U.S., Canada, and India complete nan adjacent week. The institution said nan extremity of nan beta merchandise is “to stitchery feedback and research really AI tin amended recreation planning.”

Google did not instantly respond to questions astir which Gemini models powerfulness nan tool, what information sources are used, aliases what privateness safeguards are successful place.

The move is portion of a broader research arsenic Google looks to compete pinch OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity, and different awesome AI players by integrating generative AI into recreation search.

Competitors for illustration Booking.com, Expedia, and Indian recreation aggregator MakeMyTrip person already rolled retired their ain AI integrations to streamline travel planning. In that sense, Google is arriving a spot late. But pinch its standard and reach, nan institution could still airs a superior situation — if nan instrumentality proves effective and gains traction.

Nonetheless, nan classical Google Flights interface will proceed to exist. The original formation hunt tool, launched successful 2011, is moreover getting an update pinch an action to exclude basal system fares for trips wrong nan U.S. and Canada.