PuTech Naman!

The hits from Google just keeps on coming, now they’re taking on travel sites with their newly "upgraded" flight search.

For the latest information on a flight’s status, simply search for an airline and flight number, and the first result will tell you whether your flight is on time or delayed as well as the estimated departure and arrival times.

On face value it’s actually a great feature for those searching for flight schedules however it again raises the question about Google’s quest to monopolize the web. If Microsoft’s motto is "a desktop in every home" it’s beginning to look more and more like Google’s is "a Google property/partner in every search".

It used to be that when you search for a flight schedule Google would show up links to travel sites where you can check on the status of a flight. Now with this new "flight search feature" Google 1) already shows status of the flight in the search page (which keeps you within the google domain) 2) funnels you to flightstats.com (which whom Google most likely has some kind of arrangement.

Isn’t this the equivalent of selling link ads ? Maybe someone should slap Google with a Pagerank Penalty ?