Google Flights Flight Search

Everyone knows that you can use services like Expedia and Orbitz for booking travel, but now there's a new kid on the block: Google Flights. A result of Google's acquisition of ITA Software, Google Flights is streamlined interface for exploring flight options and (in the future) booking travel.

Consistent with the typical Google esthetic, Google Flights is clean. One screen with the basic fields (from, to, dates, price, duration) for controls On the left side, users can select the number of stops, airlines, connections, departure times, etc. A couple nifty buttons on the right let users see (and filter) flights by duration and price, or by prices over the upcoming month. And, of course, in the center of it all is a nice little map, showing some sample prices for other cities. All-in-all, it's clean, sparse, effective, and fast. You can select flight combinations and see prices. For now, you have click through to an airline site to book travel.

Right now, the service is limited. It's limited to certain U.S. cities (other cities show up, but are listed as unavailable) and only provides information on round-trip (economy) flights. I think it's fair to assume that more features will be on the way (in fact, one-way flight options would be a critical one for my business travel searches).

Google flight reminds me most of Kayak, which is another great tool for business travelers, with a clean, fast interface and nice selection options. At the moment, Kayak is still a much richer travel site, with abilities to book everything from hotels to cars in addition to flights, but give Google time. I have a feeling they'll get there. From the little bit of time I've been playing around with Google Flights, I think it'll definitely be on my short list of "go to" travel planning websites.