Google Acquisition of ITA Software Gets OK

The Department of Justice will approve the Google acquisition of ITA Software, with some conditions.

DOJ will require Google to develop and license travel software, to establish internal firewall procedures and to continue software research and development. Those measures are intended to protect competition for airfare comparison and booking websites and ensure those websites using ITA’s software will be able to power their websites to compete against any airfare website Google may introduce.

The department said that Google will also be required to provide mandatory arbitration under certain circumstances and provide for a formal reporting mechanism for complainants if Google acts in an unfair manner.

Google thinks one direct result is that users will be able to type "flights to somewhere sunny for under $500 in May" into Google and get not just a set of links but also flight times, fares and a link to sites where the user can actually buy tickets quickly and easily. 

Justice Department Requires Google Inc. to Develop and License Travel Software in Order to Proceed with Its Acquisition of ITA Software Inc.

Windows Alternative to Macbook Air?

A pricey "hero" device, for sure.

Tired of the FAA pre-flight instructions?

Here's a more entertaining take.

Acer's new Honeycomb tablet to compete with iPad on price

As big a player in netbooks as Acer has become, you'd expect the firm to compete aggressively in tablets, if tablets are seen as a product that cannibalizes netbooks. The Iconia Tab A500 is Acer's first foray into tablets, and it has built a device that has to compete, price-wise, with the iPad.

Available for pre-reorder on Best Buy’s web site for $450, the device apparently will be available in Best Buy retail stores beginning April 24.


The tablet will run Android version 3.0 (Honeycomb) on its NVIDIA Tegra 250 1GHz dual-core processor, supported by a gig of RAM.

The price ranks in at just below the cheapest iPad 2, which costs $500 and is Wi-Fi only with 16GB of internal storage (just like the Iconia A500).

Acer's new Honeycomb tablet to compete with iPad on price

How Long Before Nook is a Tablet?

Barnes & Noble has opened up the Nook Color e-reader to Android developers. The new software developers kit includes
access to an expanded set of development resources to facilitate app deployment and app distribution through the Barnes & Noble storefront.

One wonders how long it will take before the Nook becomes a full-fledged tablet.

Barnes & Noble Opens SDK To Android Developers

Wireless: Don't Break What Isn't Broken

One reasonable bit of device in business is not to break what is not broken. Perhaps another good bit of advice is not to "fix" problems that already are being fixed. That advice arguably is not always followed.

In 1996, in order to induce more competition in the telecom business, the Congress passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The basic innovation was a historic change in rules on "who can be a local telephone company?"

Where in the past only one firm in a geographic area was allowed to be a local telco, the Telecom Act allowed any company to become a local telco. Of course, you now know what else was happening. Wireless was becoming a dominant way people use "voice" services.

The Internet was about to become the biggest, fastest-changing, most consequential new development in communications and media. So while regulators were moving to allow much more competition in landline voice, the market already was moving to wireless and Internet services and applications.

That's always a danger. Markets, end user demand and supply are moving so fast the danger always is that we attempt to fix older problems that already are being solved. There's little point in wasting effort doing those sorts of things. In recent days, it appears end user satisfaction with wireless is growing faster than other types of communications and media services. Maybe we shouldn't mess with that.

Mobile Handset Market Reaches Inflection Point in 2009

Over the years, there is one good rule I've found that applies to major technology trends. Though we are fond of labeling certain years the "year of" something, those forecasts nearly always are wrong. You might think that's because we are such poor forecasters. We are, though that's not the reason for the disconnects.

Most important technology transitions, if not all, always take much longer to get traction than one might suppose. But at least in the case of consequential innovations, there is some inflection point where a period of long or longish gestation suddenly reaches a time of qualitative change, where until that point there mostly had been incremental, quantitative change.

This look at handset leadership in the mobile industry probably is one of those sorts of processes. From 2001 to 2009, you see a remarkably stable market share structure. There is some share change, over time, at positions two and three, but the market remains quite stable. Only in 2010 does one see, appearing in position five, the name of Apple.

Some of us would say that was an inflection point, where a long period of smartphone gestation suddenly erupted. Market shares for handsets will not fully capture all of the changes. But they can signal important shifts, including a new role for the application ecosystem, not just a change to touchscreen interfaces.