When Google Gets It REALLY Wrong

Yesterday the Professor did a post on the Qantas A380 uncontained engine blow out.

One of the sharp readers Professor Alex contacted me immediately to tell me that when he displayed the article - google inserted an ad

I present this to you so you can see what I mean.

Now will someone learn to give Google perhaps JUST A LITTLE sensitivity.

Every airline on the planet has a disaster policy that no ads will be displayed. This is an example where Google should have the same policy.


Tsk Tsk

The Professor's 2000th Blog

Shortly - very soon - I will be celebrating 2000 Blog posts.

So I thought it would be nice to hear from you - via comment of privately what you would like to see me discuss.

It has been a long road and an unexpected one... thanks to you my dear readers for your support and encouragement

Cheers

With special thanks to the XXIII Scandinavian Congress of Mathematicians for the image.

QF 32 - Bits Fell Off But No Crash

In the first reported incident regarding an A380 - QF32 today returned to Changi after an explosion and bits fell off it.

For a video of the debris that landed in Indonesia go here.

WIT V6 - The ADD version

For those of you unfortunate enough not to attend WIT2010 in Singapore last month - you missed a treat.

So here is the condensed version - larger more in depth is available on the website including some of the speeches and presentations.

I highly recommend taking some time and viewing this.

Cheers

Global Entry's Charm offensive

For those of us who are world weary frequent road warriors - time is the most precious commodity.

So getting into the USA is obviously a great hassle even if you are a US Citizen. I have been signed up for Global Entry for over a year now and used it about 15 times. Its great. Currently available in 20 airports and allegedly expanding - its simple and straight forward ONCE you get it. The process is easy just time consuming. You have to apply (can do it online) but then gathering the paperwork and going for the interview is a bit of a pain. Once done - I am glad to say I did it.

Global Entry is now running a charm offensive. They have ads running on several international airlines (e.g. Delta I had a picture but cant find it). They have also been running other media campaign. They have even solicited the WSJ to run a piece in the Middle Seat Column.

If you do travel (and are not using MSP as the gateway where it is not currently available) then I can highly recommend it. Here is the currently list of airports:

* Boston-Logan International Airport (BOS)
* Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)
* Dallas/Ft. Worth International Airport (DFW)
* Detroit Metropolitan Airport (DTW)
* Ft. Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport (FLL)
* George Bush Intercontinental Airport, Houston (IAH)
* Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL)
* Honolulu International Airport (HNL)
* John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York (JFK)
* Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)
* McCarran International Airport, Las Vegas (LAS)
* Miami International Airport (MIA)
* Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR)
* Orlando International Airport (MCO)
* Orlando-Sanford International Airport (SFB)
* Philadelphia International Airport (PHL)
* San Francisco International Airport (SFO)
* San Juan-Luis Muñoz Marin International Airport (SJU)
* Seattle-Tacoma International Airport-SeaTac (SEA)
* Washington-Dulles International Airport (IAD)

Check on the website. http://www.globalentry.gov/

Cheers

The Mark Of The Devil @BA

This is pure coincidence - so I hope BA will not be too mad at me.

I went to visit them last month and they have the famous Olympic count down clock.

I love count down clocks - I always thought they were cool. But this one sent shivers down my spine.

Still it only goes to show that even the Professor has to be vigilant against the Evil One.

UK: Google Broke The Law

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703506904575591963217799010.html?mod=djemalertTECH

And still the UK wont actually smack the wrist of the Googleplex.

BUT now we have precedent that Google has broken the law in at least one European country. Rest assured there are other countries who are clearly going to be looking at this in a far more critical fashion

Stay tuned

Cheers

Google Buzz: Oh And About That Privacy Thing....

The Googleplex received a wrist slapping yesterday with an out of settlement court action regarding the launch of its wonderful service called Buzz.

Basically it's new service forgot to acknowledge that some things are meant to be private and acknowledged as such. And this included the default situation. Google was sued and settled out of court for about 1 minute of its revenue.

So do we think Google will play nice and stop collecting data - nope. But they better play nice and stop making gross assumptions about what we want.

Google - we be watching you, 'cos we know you be watchin' us.

Facebook Personal Data For Sale.!

So my good friend Mr Cringley and his crew from Infoworld have a wonderful piece this week. I can do no better than to reprint it in full.

http://www.infoworld.com/d/adventures-in-it/surprise-your-facebook-data-sale-849?source=IFWNLE_nlt_notes_2010-11-01

November 01, 2010
Surprise! Your Facebook data is for sale
And not just to advertisers -- some app developers are selling Facebook's user info to data brokers. Where will it end?

Facebook's privacy problems are like a centipede with footwear issues. "Other" shoes keep dropping, and there seems to be no end of them.

Lately Facebook's problems have been fueled by Wall Street Journal reporters peeking under the sheets to see what kind of shenanigans Facebook has been up to. That's how we learned Facebook apps have been inadvertently sharing user identities with advertisers, and the personal profiles culled from Facebook data by companies like Rapleaf can get very specific -- including names, locations, politics, and religious beliefs.

[ Want to cash in on your IT experiences? InfoWorld is looking for stories of an amazing or amusing IT adventure, lesson learned, or war tale from the trenches. Send your story to offtherecord@infoworld.com. If we publish it, we'll keep you anonymous and send you a $50 American Express gift cheque. ]

Imagine our surprise, then, when we turned to the InterWebs this morning and discovered that not only were Facebook apps sharing user identities (UIDs) inadvertently, but that some were also doing it advertently -- which is to say deliberately, on purpose, for money. Worse, app makers were selling user information to data brokers, which is a little like Charlie Sheen offering up his most intimate secrets to Perez Hilton. It won't stay in one place for long.

Once again, Facebook turned to blogger Mike Vernal to reveal the news. Vernal might be the most boring blogger on the planet; he's certainly one of the most obtuse, which is probably why they gave him the job. It takes him six paragraphs to get to the meat of the matter:

As we examined the circumstances of inadvertent UID transfers, we discovered some instances where a data broker was paying developers for UIDs. While we determined that no private user data was sold and confirmed that transfer of these UIDs did not give access to any private data, this violation of our policy is something we take seriously. As such, we are taking action against these developers by instituting a 6-month full moratorium on their access to Facebook communication channels, and we will require these developers to submit their data practices to an audit in the future to confirm that they are in compliance with our policies. This impacts fewer than a dozen, mostly small developers, none of which are in the top 10 applications on Facebook Platform.

We have also reached an agreement with Rapleaf, the data broker who came forward to work with us on this situation. Rapleaf has agreed to delete all UIDs in its possession, and they have agreed not to conduct any activities on the Facebook Platform (either directly or indirectly) going forward.

OK, a handful of app developers sold user identities to data brokers -- not good, but not the end of the world. If data brokers really wanted to, they could cull these same IDs manually by trolling through Facebook and collecting them. (Of course it's a lot faster and easier to simply buy them.)


Give Facebook points for bringing this to public attention before the media got to it first. Now subtract those points for giving us as little information about this matter as humanly possible.

Here's what I want to know:

* Facebook has in the neighborhood of 550,000 apps. Has the company really checked the data-sharing habits of all of them? If not, how many apps have been vetted? The top 100? 200? 1,000? Which ones have been vetted, and how would anyone else know?
* Which apps are guilty? Telling us that "fewer than a dozen" developers were involved, without telling us which ones, merely protects the guilty -- and does nothing for the people who've installed those apps and have a right to know. Even other app developers are calling for this information to be made public, because otherwise they're guilty by association.
* What data brokers bought this information? To whom did they sell it? Are people getting targeted ads (or spam, junk mail, and telemarketing calls) as a result?
* What does that "6-month full moratorium on their access to Facebook communication channels" mean exactly? That they will disappear from the Facebook apps pages? That they will go dark? And why six months? It's like Facebook is sending them to bed without dinner.
* Will Rapleaf continue to scrape data from Facebook pages and include it in its profiles? Will it continue to share its data with Facebook advertisers? How cozy were Rapleaf and Facebook in the first place?
* Where does this end? (See centipede, shoes above.)

Now contrast Vernal's statement with one of the comments attached to his blog post, which accuses an unnamed app developer of actively trying to sell Facebook users' private information to the Washington Times:

Please check in with the Washington Times about the developer who was approaching in them [sic] in early 2008 to resell Facebook user data. I ended up at a table at a conference, as this facebook app developer was trying to sell them a contract for data. I never got his name or the app---but the Washington Times' web/media team might remember him. He was specifically selling demographic information and IP addresses/locations of users to media companies so they could correlate age/sex/demographic/location for their advertisers.

This is the real issue. Is this a common practice? Does Facebook even know about this incident?

This is why I don't use Facebook apps and discourage others from doing so. I've seen too many that seem designed entirely for this purpose -- regardless of Facebook's written policies and pious statements to the contrary. I don't think the company has a clue of what's going on. For a service that claims 500 million+ members and wants to change the very nature of the Web, it's well past time Facebook got one.

Does Facebook have a clue? Weigh in below or email me: cringe@infoworld.com.

Farewell Southwest LCC King (And Easyjet too)

The old saying of it ain't over till the fat lady sings may ring a little hollow over at LUV field this week.

News reports are stating that WN will now start offering partnerships with foreign airlines in order to expand the WN brand to international markets.

At the same time - U2 is going to abandon Easiboarding in favour of (shock horror) assigned seats.

So that makes two of the leading stalwarts in LCC defectors to the conventional model.

For Southwest this has been coming for a long time. Over the past 3 years it has removed all the barriers to its becoming a regular airline. Anyone who says otherwise must examine the facts:

GDS - check
Boarding pass - check
Interline - check
Meals - check
Business Products - check
Complex fares - check

So not much left to do...

Cheers and a little sniff....

Trust What Consumers Do - Not What They Say

If this theme sounds familiar - it is. I believe firmly that consumers lie when asked questions. Not deliberately but well its because people find it very hard to express what their behavior will be in certain circumstances. Indeed time and time again people when questioned give different answers from their actual behavior. This week Gerry McGovern tackled the subject head on in his weekly piece.

I have to say I agree with him. One of my friends is a professional focus person. He is paid on a regular basis money to participate in focus groups. Some times 4 times a week. He makes a nice bit of pocket money for a retired person.

Interestingly that Erick Schmidt of Google said "People want Google to tell them what to do" did he gather that information from behavior - possibly, did he gather it from surveys - absolutely.

In Gerry's view, the worst way to design a website is to have five smart people in a room drinking lattes. The longer you leave them in the room the worse the design becomes. The next worst way is to have 15 customers in a room drinking lattes. What people say they do and what they actually do are rarely the same thing.

Why? Mostly because they say one thing and behave differently as a result of trying to be good. People will verbalize the higher more proper result but still behave differently. Its a bit like saying you will go on a diet....

And that my friends is the truth, or at least what I am saying....

With thanks to gotsole for the image.

Alliances… good or bad?

There is currently a spat going on between the airlines of the traditional variety and the airlines of the non-traditional variety. On the traditional airlines group are the likes of Air France, British Airways and several US airlines. They are complaining that Emirates is abusing its position and getting preferential pricing from the manufacturers such as Boeing via the US Government’s Exim Bank. The traditional airlines are now also very concerned that Emirates is going to start eating their lunch in a lot of markets. Indeed when you start to look at the order book from Emirates it becomes hard to imagine that the UAE Carrier is not going to take a significant chunk of world’s global traffic. In a few weeks they will announce a bumper profit – my sources tell me it will be quite pleasing to the cash strapped Emirate of Dubai.

But perhaps the traditional airlines are complaining long and loud for reasons that don’t always make sense. I have been looking lately at what the world is coming to in Airlines. The latest trend is merger in all but name aka the Marketing JVs. In my view these are back door mergers and are not really thought out well. What seems to be so incongruous is that supposed champion of the consumer the US government has been the biggest supporter in the merger process. The US DoT has effectively rubber stamped all the JV requests. Over the severe objections of its own Dept of Justice, the US DoT has approved these anti-trust immunity agreements: BA+AA and co, A++, TransPac Star and Inner Skyteam. What were they thinking! They are clearly anti-competitive. Just look at the fares.

As a direct result of these new JVs, I believe that Airline corporate management have moved further from the customer. Consider this. One of the key components of the JV alliance model is the move to local home airline serving all the alliance members in that geography. So that in the case of A++ (LH, UA, CO, AC) Lufthansa handles everyone in Germany and UA/CO handles everyone in the USA. The local market staff for LH have been fired, retired or reassigned. And vice versa. However this assumes that the JV has a strong team at the top who operate effectively a unique business. My friends – I can assure you that this is not behavior that we have seen from airlines. JV Alliances have pointed to the success of the KLM/Northwest JV that actually worked. However I think this was an exception rather than the rule. An alliance of equal partners worked because of a number of factors. Not least of which was the streamlined management structure and the ease with which the two players complemented each other. But not so the new batch.

The complexity of these arrangements is almost mind boggling in their complexity. Sadly in my view having experienced just about all of them from a consumer perspective – they do nothing to improve my travelling experience. In fact I would say that actually it has worsened the situation because remedial action out of your home market results in laughable service if you are trying to get service in the non-home market. Air France is not going to even give me the time of day when I as a Delta customer ask for help. Trust me this has not changed – its still awful.

I believe that the unwieldy management of the JVs will harm everyone’s brand involved in the JV. The service quality will fall all round. The responsiveness of the airlines to market conditions will worsen. The arrogance of some players will become acute. But perhaps the most perplexing part of all of this – is that the JVs are not going the whole hog. It seems that no one is asking the one question that would seem to be obvious. If the world falls now into effectively 5 airline types. Skyteam, Star, OneWorld, Pure LCCs and unaligned independents. So why do we need GDSs?

Now that’s a good question… anyone care to give me their answer?

Cheers

(Image courtesy of the good the bad and the ugly)

Google Will Track You - Whether You Want It or Not

More for the world of Google wanting to have all the information about you whether you want it or not.

Google is going to track you no matter whether you want to allow it or not. Google has decided that you are actually just a bit of information. And therefore your real persona and your online persona are fair game for the Googleplex.

Check out this post.

Add in the agreements that you make when you sign up for GoogleTalk and other Google applications and you would be amazed at what you have agreed to. So enough of this 4Square Mayor stuff - let's just make people eventually opt out of - rather than opt into Google Latitude. Combined with other Google products like Google Places (formerly known as Google Location) and you can start to see that Google is slowly enveloping all of us.

As an aside I think the reason Google chose "Latitude" and "Places" as brand names is because they learned from Microsoft that standard words like "Windows" are possible trade marks and therefore Google wants to own the concept of "presence" because then they own us. But they do anyway so its really rather academic.

One final thought, when you opt out of Google's clutches you only partially opt out. Google only promises not to use the information to spam you. At no time do they ever agree to stop monitoring you. Meta data (true data about data) doesn't need specific data when you own the entire data set.

And now you can go back to being afraid of where the Googleplex will go next.

Cheers

These rumours about Google/Opodo are great fun.

Unlikely but fun.

Its the weekend - pretty much wherever you are - so how about a nice rambling discourse on Opodo.

I remember back a couple of years when writing about Google getting into travel was constantly denied by Google. Remember we used to go on about Troogle? Then we heard (on reasonable reporting) that Google were looking to buy Farecast (prior to Microsoft buying them and incorporating that service into Bing). Ok that never happened but now we have Google / ITA. Big, and clearly attracting a lot of interest, angst and unwanted attention.

But something has been bugging me about these deals for a while. Look Farecast isn't ITA. While both on the surface may look like they give great flight data they both come from different sides of the equation. Farecast were always on the side of the consumer - they said don't buy now, buy later (upsetting airlines in the process). ITA, while not exactly the darling of the wider travel industry, seem much more on the industry side than, say, TripAdvisor (who appear to pretty much help consumers exclusively). For example see just how many airlines and meta-search sites are powered by ITA software.

So whatever Google are doing it seems they are focused on "helping" the industry. This is understandable - they could deliver a mediocre consumer proposition (the competitors are good, but don't own travel consumer traffic so are disadvantaged). A mediocre consumer proposition owning "free" travel focused web traffic would deliver a great revenue. No need for doing something exceptional or game changing. Perhaps then some of the pundits who say that Google wont need to bring innovation to the Travel process may be onto something.

As we have seen from large scale players such as Apple and it's iPhone business model - the real darlings of the stock market are those with multiple bites of the revenue stream. Let's look at Google and travel then.

On the media model the players/customers Google would really care about are the companies buying the adverts. On the transactional model (e.g. buying Opodo) they do need to care about consumers quite a lot more. This is something that is unlikely because its an operational business. However it's the consumers would deliver the revenue.

Of course in reality consumers have the money and wear the trousers. Long term, if Google slightly would - naturally - be expected to favour the trade (whatever they say this would happen in my opinion because Googlepus has to "game" the sellers of travel to optimize its revenue) then this leaves a tiny crack for a new entrant to take the pure consumer perspective. Maybe this could be Bing, with their consumer friendly Farecast heritage, could be that company. But that would result in another clash of titanic elephants. Not known for being swift on their feet.

Enough of this talk about elephants. Instead let's consider what would happen if the mega pachyderm Googleplex took the same approach to the travel sector as for example they have taken to other areas they have recently acquired. Instead of these multi-gazillion dollar transactions howabout building a new industry from ten plus startups who either take the consumer perspective or are part of the supply jigsaw. We know Google are running "invite only" events for some of these these travel startups so Big Brother is aware who they are (although I am personally slightly miffed that my invitation went missing the post, apparently!)

The question stands. Either Google go 100% taking the consumer perspective (aggressively helping consumers at the cost of their supplier relationships) or they go the media model, trade helping, route. The nuances of doing both are too tricky for a non-travel specialist.

If Google don't go the consumer backing route then this leaves a hole. It might be a tiny hole but it will be one that as I noted above Bing, with their Farecast system (very consumer oriented) plus many startups can attack them on. Taking this point of view, actually buying Opopo (revenue generated by consumers) may not be quite such a mad idea after all.

OK - confused? Don't be... Google isn't going to buy Opodo. That is just wishful thinking by Amadeus. (or a PR agency trying to build some value for the purchase of Opodo which is such a dead duck).

But stranger things have happened.

Google - Good Or Bad?

Careless or Stupid
Dishonest or Fiendish
Uncaring or Mean
Superior or Seeking only a master race?



Can Google really be evil? Just because it stretches plausibility doesn't make it not true. The onus on proof of "do no evil" must be on the person making that bold statement - not on the rest of civilization to prove them wrong.

In my view - Google has crossed the lines of both human decency and now more likely several laws in multiple countries. While this piece is on Google's streetview product/service - it clearly shows what happens when Google has a dominant position and/or the capability to do evil, it ACTUALLY does it. In the case in question, one has to ask the basic question, what if they did this and no one had found out?

When I discussed the Googleplex’s interesting denials earlier this year about its “accidental” collection of wifi data – I made the point that it was far from plausible/possible that the data collection could be accidental.

So far Google has made two retractions. The first one was that yes they did indeed capture personal data not just SSID and open Wifi details, the second far more serious admission is that they have kept the personal data for a very long time and still have not deleted it. Indeed, Google is not even making much of an effort to eradicate the personal data.

In privacy discussions lately, I have been amazed at the very lax approach to privacy taken by some large sections of our society. From a societal perspective as a whole it would seem that privacy has a low priority. In geographic terms – there is a general assumption that privacy is not a big deal in America. In Asia and the middle east the view is that privacy is expected to be monitored at the Government level only Australasia and Europe appear to champion the cause of privacy. On a generational basis the declining Boomer generation appears to be concerned with it but from Gen X onwards, security and privacy are just assumed to be OK. So far I have not seen a definitive study on people’s attitudes to security so I have gleaned this from many different perspectives.

Perhaps the final straw of this whole debacle is that Google has committed to deleting the data “as soon as is convenient”. It takes but minutes to do that – write a piece of code that erases this stuff from the database should be a trivial exercise for the Googleplex wonks given all the other stuff they can do to mine data.

Since I know that (A) some of my wifi ports were open when the street view was taken of my house and (B) Google still holds this data – I must be a member of the injured class.

With the Rapleaf + Facebook/MySpace Apps story over the past two weeks, the issues of what Google is doing makes chilling reading. In exposing what Rapleaf does by searching for data and capturing it from disparate but readily available public and semi public information sources from the web that are easily available just think what Google can do with all its exabytes of data that it holds on us and our behavior. Google is like an incredible octopus (perhaps we should call it the Googlepus from now on). Everyday it increases the number of Touchpoints that it has with humanity. I doubt there are now many people on the planet who are not in some way touched by the web – knowing or unknowingly in an identified fashion. Google has to stop these practices.

Over a pleasant evening with a former client in India this week – he asked a very poignant question that I had not considered before. Is Google’s behavior deliberate? He cited the increasingly arrogant positions that Google has taken in the ITA battle. His point was that Google is daring the US authorities to either ban them from taking over ITA or worse have remedial action that might include an anti monopoly action to break up the company. In my view with full hindsight, Microsoft’s 7 year battle over the browser pails into insignificance in comparison with what Google now knows about us and their control. Why the US Department of Justice has not launched an investigation into Google seems now to be a very scary thing. One thing for sure is true. We have created a commercial “Big Brother”. And he really does manage the Googleplex.

Perversely on my part I don't think that Google should be actually prevented from buying ITA judging by prior decisions from the US various departments. But if you then consider what can be done and then look at the request you can see why the Expedia cabal are scared.

Returning to the subject of Streetview are my assertions scare mongering or worse? Actually there is a lot of evidence to support my position and views. For example let’s consider the way Google dealt with its admission earlier this year that it had “by mistake” collected information. In a June 9 letter to the Energy and Commerce Committee, Google director for public policy Pablo Chavez asserted that Google "mistakenly included code in our software that collected samples of 'payload data'" from private WiFi networks. That sounds a reasonable enough explanation. But a PRIOR application for a patent indicates that Google had (and continues to have) every intention of collecting as much data as it possibly can and using it. And darn it if Google had even filed a PATENT application in January of 2010 that supports this position that Google actually has a mission to assemble as much information as possible about US residential and commercial wifi networks (and we must assume other markets since it admitted to collecting data in 30 countries).
Google’s patent application makes frequent indeed repeated reference to 'capturing' packets, including paragraph [0055], which states that the system will enable geolocations so long as the equipment being used 'is able to capture and properly decode a packet...'
Read the patent here: http://insidegoogle.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/US20100020776.pdf
Read the letter from Google to the US Energy and Commerce Secretary here: http://insidegoogle.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/LtrWaxman071910.pdf
Over the past few months I have written several Blog posts on my opinions about Google and what supports these views. It just makes me so darn nervous to see their behavior and the abuse both potential and now actual that they can put their power towards.

Here are a selection of posts you might want to read:

http://t2impact.blogspot.com/2010/08/google-on-future-will-it-all-be-good-in.html
http://t2impact.blogspot.com/2010/09/googlesphere-is-already-googleopoly.html
http://t2impact.blogspot.com/2010/08/is-google-intentionally-evil-forgetful.html
http://t2impact.blogspot.com/2010/08/wsj-gets-its-headline-wrong-google.html

And if you want to be really paranoid about it, you could like other bits of information and become a serious conspiracy theorist. Like for example as the Washington Post reported in July that Google now holds several significant contracts to supply search and geospatial information to the U.S. government. In addition, White House records show that Google executives have been holding meetings with U.S. national security officials for undisclosed reasons.

If you wish to read more on this story – starting with the UK’s Daily Mail which has been one of the major advocates for the pursuit of Google on this subject – then follow some of these links.

I thank you for reading this piece.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1323310/Google-admits-Street-View-cars-DID-emails-passwords-computers.html
Consumerwatchdog.org - http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/corporateering/articles/?storyId=35944
CNET Reporting - http://news.cnet.com/8301-30686_3-20005051-266.html
Daily Mail May 2010 - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1279178/Google-rapped-watchdog-spying-Britons-web-habits-mistake.html
The Truth or The Fight – Privacy Advocates http://www.thetruthorthefight.com/?p=6819
BNet (CBS) http://findarticles.com/p/news-articles/daily-mail-london-england-the/mi_8002/is_2010_Oct_25/google-finally-admits-spying-computers/ai_n55860471/

Now - you can be afraid - very afraid....

Amadeus – Slow or Prescient?

Amadeus likes to pride itself on its technological prowess. In my view regular readers to this blog will know I am very uneasy over some of their business practices and how they have started to exert some severe pressure on both its customers and its competitors

However I believe that it may have gone a bit too far in showing how it can control things – by pushing out an implementation by TWO MILLENIUMS!

Check out this image culled from one of their recent product enhancement announcements.



I think it shows they have a distinct attitude to working on security! So I have to wonder is Amadeus becoming the Google of the Travel Industry?

Now there’s a thought.

With a tip of the hat to Professor Andrew for the link. Ping me directly if you would like a copy of the actual link address. Its public but I don't want to appear TOO hard on Amadeus.

Cheers

Google's TV: Harder Than Flying

Seems like Google cannot get much respect for some of its products.

A great post from Buzz Feed CEO Jon Steinberg compares the new Google TV designs for remotes to be easier than "Flying a Cessna" arguably the easiest plane to fly.

Check out the story and the images. http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/10/25/buzzfeed-president-flying-easier-than-using-sony-google-tv-remote

So message to Google - better not try and end run the ITA acquisition

Cheers

Rate Parity - Evil or Not?

Rate Parity Battle Ensnares Sabre

For years the battle to bring rate parity to the hotel world has been a somewhat hit or miss affair. In the North American market where the market pays retail this is common behavior. In the rest of the world where retail is not the norm in pricing rate parity is both harder to achieve as well as much more complex.

Many people have attempted to bring this to a sense of rationality – but this has only been partially successful.

As the rate distributers and checkers get more and more sophisticated, those who commit to making rate parity work have tried to up their game. However is that good behavior for the consumer or bad?

In fact if the rate parity program starts to affect overall pricing, then it could be considered a way of raising and fixing the price. And it seems someone finally noticed

It all started with a pissing match between Skoosh .com and its larger brethren Sabre’s lastminute.com and Priceline’s Booking.com. In September – Skoosh up’ed its game by reporting both to the UK”s Office of Fair Trading, (OFT). BBC News http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11330463

Much to the chagrin of the larger players – the Skoosh decided to put the matter to the extreme test. By filing a formal complaint with the OFT..

The OFT has formally started its investigation into the practice and has notified several of the players accordingly.

The end result could have a profound effect on the long term practice of rate parity maintenance. For those who make a living out of trying to monitor and enforce rate parity – you have now been officially warned that the practice will be under some pressure. Given the other rate practices that are under the microscope – such as hotel tax rates, the hotel industry needs to be careful not to upset the UK government. So better start thinking about how else you would like to ensure that your rates are correct across the board

Memo to OFT. Good luck with this topic. And if you would like some help to give me a call.

Cheers


With a tip of the hat to Hotel Internet Help who has a good story on the subject it can be found here:

http://www.hotelinternethelp.com/lang/en/revenue-management/the-price-of-rate-parity

Slater Gets Off With Wrist Slap

So Now we have a SLATER moment entering common law.

Former JetBlue Flight Attendant copped a plea deal to avoid jail time.

Too bad - they should have thrown the book at him. The common punishment for treason in France during the Revolution would have been too good for him in my book.

And Now The End Is Near.....

Could this be really it?

Can Ryanair really acquire the Irish Government's share or enough of it to become the majority shareholder?

The Irish government's bailout of the banks is one of the most extensive of any government on the planet. The real estate bubble burst with a high percentage of these houses left unoccupied has to be paid for. So the Irish Government is frantically looking around to find assets it can flog off to fund this huge debt. Aer Lingus must just be a prime target.

MOL must be licking his lips....