 US may challenge Google's ITA buy: WSJ Washington (AFP) Jan 13, 2011 - The US Justice Department is preparing a potential court challenge to Google's $700 million acquisition of travel information company ITA Software, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. The newspaper, citing "people familiar with the matter," said that Justice Department lawyers have begun preparing legal documents for use in a possible court challenge to the ITA deal, but no decision to proceed has been made. It said federal antitrust lawyers have been examining whether acquiring ITA, which powers many of the Web's most popular travel sites, would give the Internet search giant too much sway over the online travel industry. The Journal said the government is expected to decide later this month or early next month whether it will seek to block the deal, which was announced in July of last year. A group of online travel firms has urged the US authorities to block the deal, saying it would give Google too much control over the lucrative sector. "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," they said. Members of the "FairSearch.org" coalition include Expedia and its brands Expedia.com, Hotwire and TripAdvisor, Farelogix Inc.; Kayak and its brand SideStep; and Sabre Holdings and its Travelocity brand. ITA, a 500-person firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, specializes in organizing airline data, including flight times, availability and prices. Its QPX flight data organization tool uses algorithms to combine flight information from airlines, including pricing and availability, to create a searchable database. QPX software is used by online travel agencies and airlines. Microsoft's Bing search engine, Kayak, Orbitz and TripAdvisor are also ITA customers. Andrew Silverman, a Google senior product manager, has dismissed the claims made by FairSearch.org, noting that the three most popular US travel sites -- Expedia, Priceline and Travelocity -- use data provided by ITA's competitors. Silverman also noted that Google does not plan to sell airline tickets directly and said it will honor all of ITA's existing agreements. |
Michael Punke, who is also the US deputy trade representative, warned that plans to conclude the long-stalled talks this year would be torpedoed if member states failed to step up and engage immediately in substantive negotiations.
"We were somewhat disappointed with what we heard from China when we met with them in December," Punke told reporters in Geneva.
"We had very much hoped, especially in the wake of the G20 discussions, that we (would) begin discussions on substantive negotiations. What we have heard instead is essentially what we heard before."
Punke also had a negative assessment of India's engagement, saying that New Delhi was sending "mixed signals."
"My personal assessment of India is that it's one step forward, one step back. Signals we have received from India have been very mixed," he noted.
Punke said that when he travelled to New Delhi in August, he found that "we were on a cusp of entering into ... specific types of discussion... (that were) critical for the juncture that we're at now."
However, upon his return, those "never materialised despite our efforts to engage."
The ambassador also had harsh words for Brazil, saying recent moves to raise tariffs hurt progress on negotiations.
"Brazil has taken several steps over the last couple of weeks to raise tariffs. That to me is really a stick in the eye of Brazil's trading partners.
"It creates a more difficult environment for Doha negotiations which are obviously focused on the goal of reducing tariffs," he said.
The Doha Round of negotiations, which began in 2001, have foundered amid disagreements between developed and developing countries over the level of market access for industrial products as well as agriculture subsidies.
The US ambassador reiterated Washington's stance that developed nations have given more concessions that emerging economies, and that it was now up to the latter group to stump up in order for the talks to succeed.
"We are ready, willing and able to negotiate anywhere, to negotiate any issue, to negotiate with anybody -- except ourselves," said Punke.
"That last point is important because we need interlocutors across the table from us who are prepared to talk about key substantive issues that we've worked together to identify over the past couple of months," he said.
For Punke, it is now necessary to begin negotiating in earnest in order to conclude the round this year.
"The endgame is now from my perspective so it's critical that we begin to get into the meat of negotiating the real give and take of negotiations," he said.
"It's no longer going to be sufficient if we are going to be successful in 2011 to come and to repeat talking points," he added.
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