Microsoft relaunches Farecast, changes almost nothing

Filed under: Internet, Web services, Microsoft, Search, web 2.0

Microsoft relaunches Farecast, changes almost nothing

by Brad Linder May 22nd 2008

Just over a month after paying $115 million for travel planning site Farecast, Microsoft has relaunched the site. And after spending countless hours integrating the site into Microsoft's Live Search suite of web applications, the result is... basically identical to the old site. The biggest difference we can find is the Live Search label appended to the Farecast logo.

Microsoft has folded Farecast user accounts into the Windows Live suite, which means you can login using your Windows Live ID.

You won't find Farecast results from the main Live Search page. You'll have to click the More tab, and then select "See All" to find Farecast. But eventually we wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft started bringing up Farecast results for regular travel-related search terms. That clearly hasn't happened yet. When we entered the search query: "New York to Philadelphia flight" the top search result was a link to TripAdvisor.

[via Mashable]

Tags: farecast, live-search, travel

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Quikboy said 6:10AM on 5-23-2008

I agree. I was expecting something more big to come out with the relaunch of Farecast. It's basically the same site (and look) except with a Live branding around it. I couldn't even find predictions from the site!

I hope MS could update the look of Farecast a bit, to be more similar to the current Live Search UI (which I kinda like), actually add features, and offer more integration (like Live Maps? Local business listings?). You would think MS would get by now to update the site the best they can, before launching it out as a beta, and getting rather low marks for doing little new. Sigh, I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Stacy said 4:08PM on 5-26-2008

The only thing I see different is that it is now buggy as heck.

The 30-day graphing no longer works, which really sucks. I tried searching for flights from DFW to MKE and ORD, it gave me results for only MKE. I asked for 8 day long trips, it was giving me flights that had return times of the next day.

I went to the main page to pick some dates, if you go out to where they don't have data and then go back, then all the dates are Xed out, even like tomorrow's date. As if they don't have any data anymore.

I tried it both with Firefox and Safari, both on a Mac. I used this site probably 100 times last year with my Mac, and it worked brilliantly. Windows acquires it, and it doesn't work anymore. Coincidence? You be the judge.

Daniel Sonnenfeld said 7:22AM on 5-27-2008

One change (at least): there doesn't appear to be an RSS feed to track fares any more. :(

Contrary to a previous comment, the site continues works for me using Safari 3.1.1 on Mac. I have always had problems viewing the flash-based prediction graphs on the site with Firefox 2.0.x, but I suspect that's due to an ad-blocker add-on.

Paul said 8:28PM on 7-08-2008

What do you mean MS hasn't changed it much?? Since the aquisition, Farecast no longer works the way it ought. I can't even use the site now. Everytime I log on, the calendars don't work, cities don't auto populate, and I get a msg telling me MS is here now (e.g. internal error, cannot process my request). Same results for IE as Firefox.

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