Although acting like a tech company yet, with its monopoly position in search, Android apps, and in digital marketing to intercept consumer searches for branded airline names, it seems Google is taking more and more control of the "trip planning funnel".
Google has currently a 95% share of online search, 75% of digital marketing and 97% of apps on its Android mobile operating system. The company is using its monopoly position as a search engine to promote its own Flights product to consumers that search for brand names of specific airlines. It does this by showing a Google Flights result higher up the page than the airline’s direct website link to the searched airline.
Google already knows more about consumers than any other organisation and this goes beyond travel. In addition, to use it as a search engine, which already gives a huge amount of information about a consumer's interest, with email, contacts, maps, calendar, photo and document sharing, entertainment preferences, and Youtube actions, consumers are opening up their lives to Google in various ways.
In its latest bid to become the go-to flight management mobile tool, Google has added a new feature to Google Flights which can predict flight delays.
The search giant also introduced a new feature to help customers find and shop the lowest fare with full transparency by helping customers compare the features of airline economy fares and ultra-discount bare fares on American, Delta and United.
Clicking on a fare will reveal details on “Bare Fare” restrictions, like access to overhead bins, as well as baggage rules and ticket change rules. Users can also trigger alerts to be notified of the lowest price for an itinerary.
If Google continues to increase its size in the space between consumers and airlines, it may become unstoppable once consumer behaviour has changed and a certain point of user adoption and expectation is reached.
Would it be wrong to say that Google's strategy in the travel industry is to achieve critical mass in the market, then to take the top of the funnel and push airlines to pay even more than what they pay to GDSs today?