Word: expedia
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...online links tend to funnel users to Microsoft services. Setting up a Microsoft Hotmail or MSN account to run in the slick Outlook software is a snap; doing it with non-Microsoft providers is a chore. Highlight an address in Word, and you can map it online--using Microsoft Expedia. Type a stock symbol, and you can get a live price--from Microsoft Money Central. You get the idea...
...prospect of another Travelocity or Expedia that Southwest finds so worrisome, it is who is behind it. Unlike, say, Expedia, which is an independent online travel agent (it's owned by Microsoft) that displays fares provided by all carriers, Orbitz is owned by American Airlines, Continental, Delta, Northwest and United, which alone account for more than three quarters of the total U.S. air travel market. While Orbitz, which is already serving customers ahead of its scheduled launch in June, also includes fares from other airlines, Southwest claims it being treated unfairly on the site, saying that Orbitz is using airline...
...basis of the suit is the smell of a cartel. Web sites of individual airlines have long contained fares not available on, say, Expedia - a legitimate move designed to draw customers and thus avoid having to pay commissions to the independent agents. However, opponents say, if the Big Five get together, they are likely to offer such fares on their own combination site, thus providing an online petri dish for anticompetitive collusion. At first, say critics, those fares will beat those of their competitors, but once the competitors are forced into submission - either by bankruptcy...
...those fees look to be on the way out. Northwest opened the bidding in March by discontinuing fees to online bookers; if the other airlines follow suit - and you can believe they will - Expedia and Travelocity stand to lose 25 percent of their revenues...
...like hotel reservations and car rentals. How long till the airlines start getting in on that act too is anybody's guess. But with fees disappearing and inside player Orbitz set to move in with pricing that's almost sure to be predatory, a likelier question could be whether Expedia's first quarterly profit is the beginning of a very short...