Rumors of ITA Acquisition are Just Rumors
Many of my friends have been asking me about stories they’ve heard regarding Google purchasing ITA Software. It’s only a rumor.
Here’s what happened. On April 21, Bloomberg published a story, citing only anonymous sources, claimed that Google is “in talks” with ITA. Many, many other web sites, including news agencies, blogs, and so on, repeated this story. But they all stem from the one Bloomberg story.
Since then, there has been no further information about this whatsoever.
(Of course, nobody is talking. If a company denies false rumors about news like acquisitions, but does not deny true rumors, anyone could figure out whether the rumors were true or not. To keep such events secret, the only thing to do is remain silent, no matter what.)
July 1st, 2010 at 4:19 pm
Rumor no more: Taking off with ITA.
My question, which I don’t expect an answer to any time soon, is what will be the fate of the reservation system? It wouldn’t seem to fit into the Google service culture (e.g. in the sense of SLAs and the like).
July 1st, 2010 at 4:59 pm
Ron Garet’s article suggested that Google’s not that into Lisp … Wonder how this would work out now …
July 1st, 2010 at 5:20 pm
My version of Vinay’s question: does this mean there’s one less Lisp-friendly company out there, or does it mean that Google will now be more Lisp-accepting itself?
July 2nd, 2010 at 7:35 am
On Thursday, after the market close, Google and ITA Software announced
that Google intends to buy ITA for $700M cash. It’s still tentative,
until they get government approval. Although I’m no expert, my own
guess is that it’s very likely to be approved, but it will take a
while for the deal to close: at least a month, maybe many months, is
the prevailing guess.
After that, presumably most of us will be working for Google. (Google
does not have “subsidiaries” or “business units”.) For office space
purposes, the people now at the Google Cambridge office in Cambridge
Center and our people might all get moved into a single office, but
many issues like that won’t be decided for a while.
You can find out all about it at http://www.google.com/press/ita/,
and you can Google for “Google ITA” to find everybody’s opinion.
About the reservation system project (which I have been working on
since I arrived four and a half years ago), Jeremy Wertheimer, ITA’s
CEO, says Google is “pretty interested in talking to airlines and
getting their views on it. I think there’s a lot of respect for what
we’ve been doing on it and … want to talk to airlines about how we
can get it out there.”
Thanks for the congratulations, everybody!
July 2nd, 2010 at 7:38 am
We have not been told anything about the situation with Common Lisp. Acquirers of companies with Lisp software usually make the big mistake of commanding that it must be rewritten in Java. I would be extremely surprised if Google makes this mistake.
I would not expect any new major software effort to be written in Lisp. On the other hand, it’s not clear that ITA would have done that, either, but that’s moot now.
July 2nd, 2010 at 9:41 am
Hi Dan,
Congrats (if it is to your liking)…
No new lisp systems? How about clojure?
If anyone wants to keep hacking lisp and doesn’t mind making the jump to clojure, just tell them to ping me.
We’re now working on all kinds of cool stuff above and beyond flight delay prediction.
July 2nd, 2010 at 1:33 pm
“I would not expect any new major software effort to be written in Lisp. On the other hand, it’s not clear that ITA would have done that, either…” Really? Can you say more about this? Would you agree with a choice to build with something else? Would that something else be another lisp, i.e. Clojure? Thanks, Dan.
July 2nd, 2010 at 5:14 pm
The choice of Common Lisp as a language has strengths and weaknesses are that are pretty well-understood. ITA uses many languages, not just Lisp, and people differ in their feelings about particular approaches. I’d rather not say more, as I don’t want anyone to feel affronted.