Kayak.com is a travel search engine website based in the United States. Founded in 2004, it aggregates information from hundreds of other travel sites and helps users book flights, hotels, cruises, and rental cars. Kayak combines results from online travel agencies, consolidators such as Orbitz, and other sources such as large hotel chains.
Kayak doesn't sell directly to the consumer; rather, it aggregates results from other sites then redirects the visitor to one of these sites for reservation. Thus, Kayak.com makes money from pay per click advertising, when the consumer clicks-through to one of the compared websites (For example, when the consumer is redirected to the Orbitz website).
History
The company was formed in January 2004 by co-founders of leading online travel agencies, Orbitz, Travelocity and Expedia. The company co-founders include Steve Hafner (CEO) a co-founder of Orbitz, Paul English (CTO) a former VP of technology at Intuit, Terrell Jones (Chairman), founder of Travelocity, and Greg Slyngstad (Director), founder of Expedia. KAYAK is headquartered in Norwalk, CT and has R&D centers in Concord, MA and Santa Clara, CA. The company launched a beta site in May 2004, and launched publicly in January 2005.
In late 2007 Kayak bought SideStep, another travel search site.
Financing
KAYAK has raised $230 million to date; its investors include General Catalyst Partners, Sequoia Capital (led by Michael Moritz) , Oak Investment Partners, America Online, Accel Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, Trident Capital, and Tenaya. America Online, General Catalyst Partners, and Accel Partners. It was named one of TIME Magazine's "50 coolest websites" of 2006.
Technology
Kayak is built on a Java, Apache and Linux platform. It uses XML-HTTP and Javascript to create a rich UI.
References
- ^ Company Sources
- ^ "". Alexa . http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/kayak.com http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/kayak.com . Retrieved 2009-03-11 .
- ^ "". Kayak.com . http://www.kayak.com http://www.kayak.com . Retrieved 2009-08-03 .
- ^ a b c "". Kayak.com . http://www.kayak.com/news/corporate http://www.kayak.com/news/corporate-backgrounder.html . Retrieved 2009-03-06 .
- ^ "" . http://www.sequoiacap.com/news/kayak-com-merges-with-sidestep-com;-secures-$196m-in-financing-round/ .
- ^ "". Sequoia Capital . http://www.sequoiacap.com/company/kayakcom/ . Retrieved 2009-08-03 .
- ^ http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1222598,00.html Travel and Real Estate - TIME]
- ^ "" . http://www.kayak.com/help/tech.html/ .
Competitors
- Skyscanner
- Dohop
- travelocity
- orbitz
- CheapOair
External links
- Kayak.com official website
- http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techinvestor/industry/2004-11-12-aol-kayak_x.htm America Online aims to be in vanguard of Internet travel] - Associated Press
- http://www.forbes.com/entrepreneurs/free_forbes/2005/1114/100.html Struggling upstream] - Forbes.com
- http:
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