This has been around for some time. I believe they're using technology from ITA, which was acquired by Google in 2010 [1]: <a href="http://matrix.itasoftware.com/" rel="nofollow">http://matrix.itasoftware.com/</a><p>(It's also what most flight hackers use to search for tickets.)<p>[1] <a href="http://www.google.com/press/ita/" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/press/ita/</a>
One thing you have to be careful of is with connecting flights of differing airlines. Sometimes it will propose an itinerary that just isn't realistically possible to make because you won't be able to get to the other airline in time. I've only encountered this once or twice. Otherwise, I use it all the time, successfully booking many flights through it.
As mentioned above, this launched in mid 2011:
<a href="http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2011/09/early-look-at-our-flight-search-feature.html" rel="nofollow">http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2011/09/early-look-at-our-f...</a><p>Also accompanied by Google Hotel Finder:
<a href="http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2011/07/google-hotel-finder.html" rel="nofollow">http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2011/07/google-hotel-finder...</a>
<a href="https://www.google.com/hotelfinder" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/hotelfinder</a>
This is disappointing. With all the data they now have access to through the ITA purchase, this is still much worse than what I can achieve with ITA Matrix (<a href="http://matrix.itasoftware.com/" rel="nofollow">http://matrix.itasoftware.com/</a>).
A handy reminder of why flight search is Hard with a capital H:<p><a href="http://www.demarcken.org/carl/papers/ITA-software-travel-complexity/img0.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.demarcken.org/carl/papers/ITA-software-travel-com...</a><p>(ITA being the company purchased by Google)
Wow that's ridiculously fast. I'm used to seeing long-running spinners and "loading" pages.<p>Anyway, for US travel, no Southwest = no deal for me (not that Google or the other searches can do anything about that).
The first impression I got from this was an interesting combination of creepy and incompetent.<p>The creepy part: The site gave 5 suggestions for places I might want to fly to. 3/5 were cities I've traveled to multiple times in the last few years. And while I might accept e.g. London as a default suggestion for anyone in Europe, something like Helsinki is a lot harder to justify.<p>The incompetent part: Google knows damn well I live in Zurich. They have Google+ profile information, they have my Android information, they have ip geolocation (which definitely gets my ISP right). So why is the suggested starting airport 150 km away, in another country? Ridiculous.
Any info on how does it stack up against skyscanner / esky ?<p>edit: after a few minutes i can say that while the UI is 100x better than the aforementioned competiton, the flights my usual route i take few times a year (LDN - KRK) only display the price for the most expensive companies, which sort of defeats the point of using a crawler/search engine for this. hopefully they will add easyjet/ryanair/etc soon.
For those that live in Europe and want a powerful search engine that includes low-cost flights (a deal-breaker for me), I recommend Azuon.<p><a href="http://azuon.com/en/feature-tour" rel="nofollow">http://azuon.com/en/feature-tour</a><p>It's incredibly addictive.<p>Combined with airbnb you can plan some much cheaper and adventurous routes.<p>The payment plans are as follows:<p>- €7.89 for 3 months (subscription)<p>- €12.03 for 6 months<p>- €16.54 for 12 months<p>- €19.87 for 1-year<p>I've subscribed for 3 months now.
It's worth every penny.
"our goal will be to refer people quickly to a site where they can actually purchase flights, and that we have no plans to sell flights ourselves."<p>By the look of it, this indeed follows the guideline they set. Google has always had a strong dislike of aggregators, and this certainly could easily be a big hit to sites like that.<p>That said, while it is a slick interface, I know quite a few people who are going to be quite unhappy about this being released.
Wow, type in a place as a destination that doesn't have an airport (like Flagstaff, United States) and it will give you a map of the area, showing the lowest price for all the surrounding places.<p>I had intended to fly into Pheonix and rent a car to drive to Flagstaff, now I can clearly see where it's cheaper to fly into.<p>Nice.
"Flights from Austria are not supported". Ok, I'll just keep using <a href="http://matrix.itasoftware.com/" rel="nofollow">http://matrix.itasoftware.com/</a>.
I'm the OP on reddit (posted this morning), note that there are a couple of other sites that do the same, and some which seem to have a better choice or airlines and prices.<p>I put a comment together with all the suggested sites:<p><a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1hhqs7/google_flights_choose_dates_and_a_budget_and/cauo9mg" rel="nofollow">http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1hhqs7/google_fl...</a>
This gives me an urge to be spontaneous for a weekend. I don't always want to know where I'm going until a few days before it; and, knowing where there are airports and which ones have non-stop flights at a moment's inspection is actually quite a cool and convenient thing!
Is there a reason why they don't include something similar to Bing Flights' Price Predictor? I haven't actually booked a flight since they released that, but it seems like a nifty/useful piece of tech that Google would want an answer to.
For anyone feeling disappointed, take a look at Flight Explorer. It quickly became my first step when searching for flights or inspiration.<p><a href="https://www.google.com/flights/explore/" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/flights/explore/</a>
Hmm, Google is missing the flexible dates and calendar view, while <a href="http://matrix.itasoftware.com/" rel="nofollow">http://matrix.itasoftware.com/</a> is missing EasyJet and presumably other low-cost airlines.
"Sorry, flights from South Korea are not currently supported."<p>Which is fine, because local websites always have 30%+ cheaper rates than ITAsoftware, Hipmunk et al.
$700 million and 2 years later, and flight search is <i>still</i> slower than the first random site I picked (dohop.com).<p>In the meantime I'm left wondering just how much global travel information now finds itself in the hands of the US feds as a result of the purchase.