So that was the end of that - just two and a half months after supposedly being acquired by Google the trip planning and tour operating service Ruba is no longer.
The site has a short message thanking members, readers and tour operator partners for their enthusiasm and business before the acquisition was made.
This was the site before today:
At the time of the announcement there was confusion as to whether the business had been bought or just the people behind it, in particular co-founders Mike Cassidy and Arnaud Weber, the former a CEO of three startups Xfire, Direct Hit, and Stylus Innovation, and Weber working as technical lead on Google Chrome.
Google and Cassidy never disclosed exactly what they would be doing once sitting at their new desks in Mountain View, California.
The last noteworthy piece of news to come out of the Ruba camp was in June when it urged members to join travel guide siteEverytrail, effectively giving those who had spent time uploading pics and contributing content a new home... if they wanted one.
But still one of the interesting points to emerge from the Ruba saga concerned the fate of those fronting it and the technology behind it.
The guide content and user experience featured on the site was not too dissimilar to the reams of other travel sites on the web, so probably not of concern to Google.
But the site's clever way of building a metasearch tool for activity and small tour operator products was extremely interesting and, by all accounts, well respected.
Now given that the industry now understands a little bit more about Google's aspirations for the travel (spending $700 million on buying ITA Software indicates a pretty strong desire to take the sector seriously), snapping up the brains, and probably their technology, behind a metasearch system for tour operators could be seen in a new light.