Today, every time you see a cheap flight on Google Flights, you are looking at the polished grandchild of a scrappy, text-based tool named Matrix—a piece of software that proved the airlines never really knew what their own tickets were worth.
Google won, paying for ITA Software. The Department of Justice approved it only under strict conditions: Google had to keep licensing the engine to rivals for five years. matrix ita software
By 2005, ITA was the silent giant. They weren't a consumer brand, but they powered the search for If you searched for a flight online in the mid-2000s, there was a 60% chance the search ran through ITA’s Boston-based servers. The Google Acquisition & The Public Matrix In 2010, a massive tech war broke out. Google, Microsoft (Bing), and Amazon all tried to buy ITA. The prize was the world’s best flight-search engine. Today, every time you see a cheap flight