Justice Dept Inquiry Zeroes In on Google-ITA Deal

The Justice Department is trying to determine whether Google would gain too much sway over the online travel industry by acquiring ITA Software Inc., which powers the Web's most popular airline-ticket search and booking sites.

The merger investigation is at an early stage, but according to people familiar with the situation, Justice antitrust authorities are focusing on two potential areas of concern: whether rivals would continue to have access to ITA's data and whether Google would unfairly steer Web searchers to its own travel services. Several players in the online travel industry said they are expressing concerns to government lawyers in hopes of spurring them to challenge Google's deal to buy ITA. They said Google would instantly become the new gateway for finding airfares and could promote its travel search engine over other sites' search engines, among other things.