A spokeswoman for the U.S. Dept. of Justice had "no comment" today on whether its Antitrust Division will take up Google's pending $700 million acquisition of ITA Software.
It's considered a slam dunk that DOJ or the Federal Trade Commission will review the proposed acquisition, and The New York Times reports that the two government agencies are discussing which one will handle it.
Proponents of the deal likely received some slightly positive news in Everbread's announcement that it reached a funding deal with Bessemer Venture Partners. The funding is said to be worth between $70 to $100 million.
Everbread, which is developing a flight pricing and shopping engine, Haystack, doesn't have any market power as yet, but Google mentioned Everbread in Google's ITA announcement in the context of competing flight-search products.
In 2006, ITA Software received $105 million in funding, a move that supported its growth.
Meanwhile, although the Google-ITA deal has just been signed, Orbitz WorldWide weighed in with some thoughts about the acquisition's likely impact [Orbitz.com uses ITA's QPX product for air shopping and pricing]:
"We have strong historical relationships with both Google and ITA, and have a long-term contract with ITA to use its search technology. Google has announced that it will honor all existing agreements and in fact is also seeking to add new partners.
"The relationship with ITA relationship is a long-standing one for Orbitz, and significantly predates Travelport’s acquisition of Worldspan. However Worldspan’s e-Pricing search technology is a good solution that Travelport is devoting resources to develop. So we have alternatives available to us.
"The proposed acquisition will receive and should receive a robust review by competition authorities to ensure that the proposed business combination will not hurt competition. As part of this review, interested parties will have the opportunity to comment on what this acquisition could mean for competition in the online travel space, and what it could mean for consumers. We are confident that the regulatory authorities will address any and all appropriate concerns that get identified during this review process."