Briefs

By Benjamin J. Romano, Seattle Times, Apr 18, 2008

Microsoft bought Seattle-based airfare prediction and travel site Farecast earlier this month for around $115 million, according to a person familiar with the transaction.

"Farecast has been a partner of ours on MSN Travel and we look forward to working closely with the Farecast team to incorporate and apply its technology in new and interesting ways," Whitney Burk, a spokeswoman with Microsoft's Online Services business, said in a statement.

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Farecast was founded in late 2003 by Oren Etzioni, a computer-science professor at the University of Washington. The online service, launched in 2006, uses data-mining technology to predict whether the price of specific air-travel itineraries will rise or fall, and whether a currently listed hotel-room rate is a good deal.

"I feel like my baby is all grown up, and it's a very exciting feeling," said Etzioni, who remains on the company's board. He credited the current management and employees for taking his concept and "working incredibly hard over more than three or four years. This acquisition is really a credit to what they have built up."

The broad, data-mining technology underpinning Farecast has several potential applications that benefit consumers, Etzioni said. He declined to discuss Farecast's specific plans, but pointed to other examples, such as Clearflow, a new feature of Microsoft's Live Maps to help drivers dodge traffic jams, and the real-estate forecasting site Zillow.

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