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After Google's Purchase Of Frommer's, Could A Google Travel Be Coming?

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With all the traveling I’ve done in the last few months, I’ve had hours riding in cars and planes and sitting around airports and truck stops to do a lot of thinking. Mostly, I thought about how flat out aggravating traveling can be.

It seemed only fitting that once I got home the first thing I see is the Wall Street Journal reporting that Google is buying Frommer’s Travel Guides. As WSJ said, this move is to boost Google’s offerings of reviews, but a few other things crossed my travel weary mind after reading this.

One, I had no idea that print guides were even still published — I pretty much rely on Yelp for tips while traveling. And two, could a Google Travel be the next step for the search giant? Because that would be an awesome idea.

I know I’m not alone in relying on Google for pretty much everything these days, which does kind of bother me in a Nineteen Eighty-Four-type of way, but Google just makes things simple. Need an oil change? Type it into Google and auto places pop up on the map around you. Looking for a restaurant, a puppy, Tibetan prayer flags? Just Google it.

So now after this purchase of Frommer’s, imagine Google creates a Google Travel. All you’d have to do is type in your destination and the site could plan everything for you.

Starting with booking your flight, Google Travel could find all the hotels in the area, all the best restaurants, all the bars, the best tourist destinations. What if it could even suggest things to do based off of your interests on Google+?

Then you could do the same search on your iPhone or Android (or just synch Google Chrome) and maybe book tickets to a show on your phone, which then links with Google Maps to give you driving directions or bus routes and traffic info. Maybe you’re in a different country and Google Translate could bridge the language barrier.

After how frustrated I got switching between Yelp and Google Maps on my phone just trying to find a good bar to watch baseball (and drink, obviously), I would have loved for all this travel advice to be in one trusted place.

Google Travel could even find for you the small things that turn out to be a hassle to locate in an unfamiliar place. Like a car wash. You have no idea how long I spent trying to find a place to wash my car.

We’re in an age where we don’t need to know anything, we can just type what we want into Google and the answer will be there. For my generation, typing something into the search bar is just second nature, and the same goes for young travelers.

While I was traveling I drove about 2,400 miles with my dad. The entire time he insisted on digging print maps out of his suitcase, and I insisted on just having Google Maps make our driving route.

Google has changed how we search in almost every sense of the word. It is even changing how we see the world, so it’s only obvious for it to change how we travel too—especially for such a technology savvy generation.