Google 20% time volunteers have been rewriting the ITA Matrix flight search app
For those unfamiliar with ITA Matrix, it was for a long time the go-to flight search tool for the most dedicated flight hackers, points hackers, etc.<p>It was built by ITA Software [1][2] in the early-mid 2000s (the earliest mention I can find of it is in 2004 [3]) to test and showcase the capabilities of their flight search platform. I once heard that ITA and other consumer-facing flight search companies had tested that kind of UI with ordinary users, but found that not enough people understood or liked it enough for them to justify making it a mainstream interface.<p>Hipmunk, a YC-backed flight search site that launched in 2010, was heavily influenced by the ITA Matrix UI, after co-founder Adam Goldstein had found Matrix to be the best way for him to find flights when travelling around the world for college debating competitions. And while Hipmunk did a good job of being more consumer-friendly and popular than Matrix had been, sadly they didn&#x27;t gain enough traction to make it as a standalone company, and after being acquired by SAP&#x2F;Concur, it was shut down last year.<p>It&#x27;s an interesting, and perhaps depressing case of a product design concept being far superior to what&#x27;s available in the mainstream for a certain class of user, but cannot gain enough mainstream acceptance to be a viable business or even a well-supported service for those who love it. And far more than most other product categories, flight search has huge infrastructure costs, so it&#x27;s very difficult to economically sustain niche products (from grim personal experience of being part of a team trying to build a novel flight search product ourselves).<p>In this case it&#x27;s just lucky that Google owns the infrastructure and has enough enthusiasm internally to keep it going to some extent.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;ITA_Software" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;ITA_Software</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;xconomy.com&#x2F;boston&#x2F;2008&#x2F;12&#x2F;17&#x2F;ita-software-the-travel-company-everyone-uses-and-no-one-knows-reinvents-airline-reservations-again&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;xconomy.com&#x2F;boston&#x2F;2008&#x2F;12&#x2F;17&#x2F;ita-software-the-trave...</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fodors.com&#x2F;community&#x2F;europe&#x2F;customs-question-seattle-amsterdam-paris-484637&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fodors.com&#x2F;community&#x2F;europe&#x2F;customs-question-sea...</a>