Expedia Puts TripAdvisor Up For Sale as Google Invades its Turf

Online travel agency Expedia is putting its highly-profitable travel review sites, including TripAdvisor, up for sale. The decision came as a surprise and many analysts think it's probably because Expedia hears Google's hoof beats thundering near.

Expedia's move comes just days after the U.S. Justice Department approved Google's $700 million purchase of flight-data company ITA Software. (Read more Expedia complaints).

The government attached conditions to the sale but anyway you look at it, owning the premier source of flight data puts Google first in line for takeoff into the lucrative travel review, search and reservation business.

Since making its bid for ITA, Google has been beefing up its “Places” search product which, like TripAdvisor, displays hotel reviews and lets users make reservations. (Read more TripAdvisor complaints). As Google has been ramping up Places, TripAdvisor and other travel review sites have experienced declines in their traffic, according to TripAdvisor CEO Stephen Kaufer.

In its agreement with the Justice Department, Google agreed to continue licensing ITA's software to online search firms for five years and must protect its customers' sensitive information.

The ITA data powers online travel agencies that sell airline tickets and other travel products. Google has said it does not plan to get into that business, although there is apparently nothing in the Justice agreement that would prevent it from doing so.

But some financial analysts said they saw little risk to Expedia and other online travel agencies from the Google-ITA deal.

"We do not view it as a game changer given Expedia's limited exposure to air (12 percent of revenues), Google will have to agree to a broad set of restrictions, limiting the risks to OTAs and stepped-up anti-trust scrutiny of Google search, which should help contribute to a level playing field for OTAs versus Google," said Naved Khan, an analyst at Jefferies, quoted by theInternational Business Times.

BesidesExpedia.com , Expedia, Inc. owns hotels.com, Hotwire.com, TripAdvisor Media Network, Expedia Affiliate Network, Classic Vacations, Expedia Local Expert, Expedia CruiseShipCenters, Egencia, eLong, Inc. and Venere Net SpA.