Major Disclosure: Google Planning to Stop Showing Flight Ticket Prices In Its Search Results

If we go by a major report, Google is pulling off a software tool that let small companies access search information on airfares, which is a potential blow to online travel immigrants in the hospitality business arena.

Google’s been working on this tool for quite some time and now it is ready to implement it.

The tool was opened in 2011 after its $700 million (roughly Rs. 4,521 crores) acquisition of ITA Software Inc., an online airfare broker.

In approving the deal, a federal judge required that Google keep an ITA flight search and pricing software, called QPX, accessible to third parties for at least five years. And, in 2014, Google created a cheaper version of the QPX software, called QPX Express, meant to target smaller companies and startups.

Google used ITA’s tool to create Google Flights, which sums up the airline prices directly inside its powerful search engine. The product battles with companies like Priceline Group’s Kayak.com and Chinese travel giant Ctrip.com International’s Skyscanner.

A spokeswoman for Priceline said that the change won’t affect the company’s websites that offer flights.

Since buying ITA, Google has slowly improved its travel-search products and has started allowing some users register flights without having to directly visit sites recognized by Expedia Inc. and Priceline, the two key dominant players in the industry. Besides, those two companies are amid Google’s most valued customers, giving away billions on online ads every year, which is, in fact, Google’s most primary source of revenue.