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Online travel sites seek to ground Google-ITA deal

Argentina slams door on 'trade war' Barbie
Buenos Aires, Argentina (AFP) March 9, 2011 - Argentina cracked down hard Wednesday against problem imports, including a well-known leggy blonde: the Barbie doll. President Cristina Kirchner announced there would be customs barriers slapped on Chinese-made imports from textiles to home appliances, luxury cars and cellular phones, as well as iconic plastic plaything Barbie, made by American toymaker Mattel. Don't tell her friend Ken, but Barbie is in big trouble.

According to the Argentine government, Mattel committed a "grave offense during its operations," though it did not immediately identify the alleged error related to the doll. Industry analysts said Kirchner likely was doing her part to try to protect local toymakers. Mattel is the world's biggest toymaker, with 2010 sales of some $5.8 billion. At least it was not ideological trouble for Barbie. Leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez once called the doll dangerous to young girls' minds.

Chairman of China appliance giant GOME resigns
Hong Kong (AFP) March 10, 2011 - Chinese electrical appliance giant GOME said chairman Chen Xiao had resigned with effect from Thursday, five months after he survived a bid to oust him in a bitter feud with the firm's jailed founder. The company had been embroiled in a power struggle between its board members and founder Huang Guangyu -- once China's richest man -- who was jailed in May last year for 14 years on bribery and insider-trading charges. GOME said in a statement that Zhang Dazhong, founder of appliances retail chain Beijing Dazhong Electrical Appliances Co. Ltd., would succeed Chen, who was resigning "for family reasons".

Zhang sold his firm to GOME in December 2007 for 3.6 billion yuan (US$550 million). Since his jailing Huang had waged a high-profile war from his cell against company executives, calling for his allies to be installed on GOME's board and its chairman to be sacked -- but both proposals were rejected by shareholders in September. A sign of a possible resolution to the row came two months later when Hong Kong-listed GOME Electrical Appliances announced it had signed a memorandum of understanding with Huang's Shinning Crown Holdings to appoint two non-executive directors picked by Shinning Crown to the board.

GOME said in its statement Wednesday that Zhang was joining the board as a non-executive director and also named accountant Conway Lee as an independent non-executive director. Huang's imprisonment marked a spectacular fall from grace in a case that also ensnared several top Chinese police officials. He has stepped down from the board but remains the company's single biggest shareholder. Beijing's High Court freed Huang's wife, Du Juan, on parole in August after commuting her three-year prison term for insider trading, but upheld his sentence. Huang was also fined 800 million yuan (US$120 million).
by Staff Writers
Washington (AFP) March 8, 2011
When Google and Yahoo! forged an advertising pact in 2008, Thomas Barnett headed the anti-trust division of the US Department of Justice, which stepped in and torpedoed the deal.

Fast forward to today and Barnett, now in private practice, again has Google in his sights.

Barnett is serving as counsel for Expedia.com, which has joined with several other online travel websites in an effort to ground Google's proposed $700 million acquisition of flight information company ITA Software.

Expedia and other members of the FairSearch.org coalition are urging the Justice Department to block the Google-ITA deal -- just as it did in November 2008 with the Google-Yahoo! advertising agreement.

They are claiming that Google's purchase of ITA would give the Internet search giant too much control over the lucrative online travel sector and lead to higher prices and fewer choices for consumers.

"You're taking the dominant flight search engine company, which is ITA, and you're combining it with the dominant online search company, which is Google," Barnett told AFP.

"You're going to end up with a combined entity that will be positioned to come in and dominate the online travel search space."

Steve Kaufer, president and chief executive of TripAdvisor, an Expedia brand and ITA client, said competition is needed to keep airline ticket prices down.

"Fares stay low generally because consumers are able to find a wide range of fares from a wide range of airlines on a wide range of sites," Kaufer said.

A Google takeover of ITA could lead to "only one place to shop," he said, "and that might be good for Google but it's anti-consumer."

Other FairSearch.org members include Hotwire, another Expedia brand, Kayak and its brand SideStep, Sabre Holdings and its brand Travelocity, Microsoft, Foundem of Britain, France's Level and Farelogix.

ITA Software, a 500-person firm founded in 1996 by Massachusetts Institute of Technology computer scientists, specializes in organizing airline data, including flight times, availability and prices.

ITA flight data software is used by many US airlines and a number of leading online travel sites, including Expedia's Hotwire and TripAdvisor, Kayak, Orbitz and Microsoft's Bing search engine.

Google said the ITA acquisition would help it create new tools that will make it easier for consumers to search for travel, compare flight options and prices and drive more customers to online travel agencies.

The Mountain View, California-based company has said it has no plans to sell airline tickets or set airfare prices.

Robert Birge, chief marketing officer for Kayak, said ITA offers a "unique and irreplaceable asset, one that the industry has come to rely on."

Google's ownership of ITA would allow it to limit access to the company's products, Birge said, "either by not renewing licensing agreements or by not passing along upgrades."

He also voiced fears that because of Google's online search dominance, "if someone is searching for something like cheap flights, Google could intercept that with their own product."

Barnett said the Justice Department could put restrictions on the Google-ITA deal to protect competition, but they would be difficult to monitor or enforce.

"In this case, the best answer really is to block the transaction," he said, adding that a Justice Department decision is expected "virtually anytime."

Birge said Kayak has attempted to open discussions with Google and ITA about renewing the company's ITA agreement, which expires at the end of 2013.

"We said we'd like to get the contract extended on equitable terms, to get assurances that we're going to continue to get upgrades, to get assurances that our intellectual property will be protected," he said.

Orbitz, however, which is not a FairSearch.org member, had its agreement with ITA renewed last month, through December 2015, in a move seen as dealing a potential blow to the opponents of the acquisition.

In another development since the Google-ITA deal was announced in July, Microsoft announced last week that Kayak will power travel search in Bing.

Commenting on the Kayak-Bing move, a Google spokesman told AFP: "This is just the latest evidence of how fast things are evolving in online flight search, and how much room there is for other players to compete.

"We're eager to bring more competition and choices for consumers searching for flights online," the spokesman said.



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TRADE WARS
Global Witness wary over China, DR.Congo deal
Kinshasa (AFP) March 8, 2011
Global Witness Tuesday criticised as opaque a $6 billion infrastructure-for-mining deal between the Democratic Republic of Congo and China, saying it could not be monitored. The ambiguity of the deal, never published by the parties, made it hard to measure whether its pledges were being met, the watchdog body said, also raising concerns about some provisions. DR Congo has promised Chines ... read more







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