Bing Picks Kayak for Travel Search Partnership

Microsoft’s Bing is partnering with Kayak.com, the travel price comparison site, to provide flight search results in the U.S.

Today’s announcement follows travel improvements made just last week on Bing.

Last week, Microsoft integrated travel results right into the search bar. For instance, if you started typing “Seattle to JFK,” a menu drops down displays the best price.

In the coming weeks, that underlying data will be aggregated and sourced by Kayak, which is currently prepping for its initial public offering.

Previously, Microsoft was using data from Farecast, which was an online travel search engine Microsoft acquired in 2008. In addition to aggregating prices, the Seattle startup created technology that tries predicting whether airfares will rise or fall.

Microsoft will continue to use the Farecast technology to help people decide whether they should buy or wait.

In a blog post written by Krista Pappas, Bing’s Global Travel Industry Director, she explained, “For Bing, this means we can focus our development resources on delivering even more unique and valuable features for customers.”

Kayak is just one of many partners Microsoft relies on for providing information for other search verticals. Other partners include Facebook, Twitter, Wolfram Alpha, and yesterday, it partnered with Dealmap to add daily deals to search results.

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Just as the atom bomb was the weapon that was supposed to render war obsolete, the Internet seems like capitalism’s ultimate feat of self-destructive genius, an economic doomsday device rendering it impossible for anyone to ever make a profit off anything again. It’s especially hopeless for those whose work is easily digitized and accessed free of charge.

— Author Tim Kreider on not getting paid for one’s work