I’m not clear on why we would still need travel agents or anything, but if we do, Google Flights, launching today, is up to the task. Initially only available in a couple of US cities, Google Flights is the first result we’ve seen of Google’s acquisition of travel software company ITA back in April.

Apparently the past five months have been spent integrating ITA’s technology with Google’s other products. The service doesn’t seem too different to any other flight-search websites on the internet, beyond being Google, but it is still way deep in beta, and Google’s blog post about the ITA acquisition does suggest they have some bigger plans coming up:

Once we’ve completed our acquisition of ITA, we’ll work on creating new flight search tools that will make it easier for you to search for flights, compare flight options and prices and get you quickly to a site where you can buy your ticket.

Presumably this means Google will eventually be re-implementing all the sexy features that had made ITA special the last time around – searching by flights with variables for nearby airports, nearby events, and seating preference, for instance.

Not that Google’s said anything about it. Because why would they? They’re Google.

[Source: SearchEngineLand]