Google's purchase of the Massachusetts-based ITA raises prospects of a battle over the lucrative sector between the Web search giant and Expedia, Kayak, Orbitz, Microsoft's Bing Travel and other sites.

Google said its acquisition of ITA, which was founded in 1996 by a team of computer scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, "will create a new, easier way for users to find better flight information online."

"The acquisition will benefit passengers, airlines and online travel agencies by making it easier for users to comparison shop for flights and airfares," the Mountain View, California-based company said in a statement.

"Airline travel and search are a terrific opportunity for more innovation, more investment and more interesting products," Google chief executive Eric Schmidt said in a conference call. "There's clearly more room for competition and innovation here."

Google stressed that it "won't be setting airfare prices and has no plans to sell airline tickets to consumers."

"Our goal is to build a tool that drives more traffic to airline and online travel agency sites where customers can purchase tickets," the company said.

ITA, a 500-person firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, specializes in organizing airline data, including flight times, availability and prices.

Its QPX flight data organization tool uses algorithms to combine flight information from airlines, including pricing and availability, to create a searchable database.

QPX software is used by online travel agencies and airlines including Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, Continental Airlines, Southwest Airlines, United Airlines, US Airways, Virgin Atlantic Airways and others.

Bing, Kayak, Orbitz and TripAdvisor are among ITA's present customers and Google said it looked forward to working with them and will "honor all existing agreements."

Google vice president Marissa Mayer said nearly half of all airline tickets are now sold online and Google said requests for travel-related information are among the highest-volume queries received at the search engine.

"But for many people, finding the right flight at the best price is a frustrating experience," Mayer said.

"Pricing and availability change constantly, and even a simple two-city itinerary involves literally thousands of different options."

She expressed confidence that ITA's and Google's partnership would "create great user innovations" to make searches easier for customers.

Google CEO Schmidt noted that previous Google deals have come under close scrutiny from US anti-trust regulators but said "we're pretty comfortable."

"We expect this will go through the regulators," he said, adding that Google believed the deal was "basically pro-competitive and basically pro-consumer."

The acquisition of ITA is Google's largest purchase since it bought mobile advertising network AdMob for 750 million dollars. That deal received the green light from US regulators last month.

Google shares were trading 0.09 percent higher at 439.89 dollars in after-hours electronic trading after losing 1.23 percent during the day.

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