![]() ![]() (This product is still under development, and it may not prove commercially useful.) Additional licensing requirements apply to ITA’s future InstaSearch product. For example, Google may reduce those expenditures if its third-party licensing revenue from QPX declines. Certain circumstances may limit this obligation. Google must continue to spend at least as much on research and development and maintenance of ITA’s system as it did in the prior two years. The Final Judgment also has conditions that may affect future products. Furthermore, the Final Judgment requires that Google offer the same version of ITA’s technology both to its competitors (other travel search companies) and to its other licensors. Upgrades to ITA’s software that take place during the term of the Final Judgment must be offered to competitors at the same price as Google charges to other customers, such as airlines, that license the software. Preventing foreclosure also requires DOJ to determine whether Google is licensing its most advanced technology or if Google is disadvantaging its rivals by only allowing them access to inferior technology. Whether the terms in the contracts that Google offers its competitors are fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory will largely be determined by comparing them to the terms of licensing agreements with similarly situated OTIs existing as of or subsequent to the date of the Final Judgment. The Final Judgment indicates that DOJ will use existing contracts as a starting point for determining reasonableness. In effect, DOJ must determine what are “reasonable rates,” which DOJ in the past had been reluctant to do. Implementation of this type of remedy requires that in the future, DOJ must determine whether the prices of the licenses meet the terms of the Final Judgment. That conclusion stemmed in part from DOJ’s finding that there are no adequate existing or potential substitutes to the system ITA offers.ĭOJ sought to prevent foreclosure with a condition in the Final Judgment that requires Google to license ITA technology to Google’s rivals in travel search at commercially reasonable and non-discriminatory rates. ” DOJ found that Google could refuse to renew contracts or enter into contracts at less favorable terms, or degrade the speed or quality of the services offered to competitors, and that it had the incentive to do so. ![]() For example, it has been argued that Google could lower the ranking of unpaid search results from competing providers of travel search, but the Final Judgment does not address that possibility.ĭOJ concluded that Google/ITA would have the ability and incentive to foreclose competing online travel intermediaries’ (OTIs’) access to ITA’s technology, and thereby weaken competition because “increased profits from driving customers to its new travel service from rival OTIs will likely outweigh any lost profits from reduced licensing revenues from QPX. DOJ did not address concerns that Google would use its position in general search to gain an unfair advantage in travel search. After the transaction, Google would compete with travel search providers that depend on the ITA services, and it could foreclose access to those services. ![]() Google currently does not offer travel search but plans to develop a travel website that will offer comparative flight search services.ĭOJ’s main concern was that Google was acquiring a “critical input” to the provision of flight search. ITA offers its services to major airlines, travel meta-search companies (such as Kayak), online travel agents (such as Orbitz), and consumers. ITA provides technological solutions for organizing and facilitating access to flight information, or as DOJ refers to it, “independent airfare pricing and shopping systems” (“P&S Systems”). Agencies face a number of significant issues in implementing such behavioral remedies.ĭOJ feared that Google’s acquisition of ITA would reduce competition in the market for flight search services. Those conditions, which are set out in a proposed settlement (“Final Judgment”) that DOJ, Google, and ITA filed with the court, are unusual because they restrict Google’s post acquisition behavior rather than requiring a divestiture of assets. ![]() Department of Justice (“DOJ”) recently agreed to allow Google Inc. ![]()
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