I couldn't agree more about Google sticking up for what's best for Google. And while I don't agree that we need more government regulation and intervention, we do need to call Google on their BS.
It gets even funnier if you read between the lines on their "take action" page and translate.
Original: "A free and open world depends on a free and open Internet."
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Translated: "Google's revenues depend on a free and open Internet where we can freely monetize content created by everyone else."
Original: "Some proposals could permit governments to censor legitimate speech — or even allow them to cut off Internet access. Other proposals would require services like YouTube, Facebook, and Skype to pay new tolls in order to reach people across borders. This could limit access to information — particularly in emerging markets."
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Translated: "Who are these governments to censor what appears on the Internet? Only Google and our hand-tuned animal-named algorithms have the right to determine what people see and don't see. And how dare anyone but Google attempt to impose tolls on the Internet? Shocking, the audacity of these governments..."
Original: "Governments alone, working behind closed doors, should not direct its future."
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Translated: "Governments alone, working behind closed doors, should not direct its future. That privilege belongs to Google alone."
Original: "The ITU is also secretive. The treaty conference and proposals are confidential."
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Translated: "Only Google is allowed to be secretive. Everyone else must be open."
@nerd_in_rage -- we originally started with purely text as an approach. You can see one of our older blog posts here where we talk about the simplicity and clarity afforded by "Just use text":
http://blog.cleartrip.com/2007/03/10/a-picture-says-a-thousa...
Over time, however, we changed our minds a little bit. And we were driven, in no small part, by the rapid shift to web consumption on post-PC devices. We explained our thinking in another blog post:
MaxGabriel -- this is a bit of a subjective choice. We chose to go with the "bed" approach over the "building(s)" approach for two reasons:
1. We think the extensive usage of the original bed icon in wayfinding signage around the world makes it something that most users have already "learned". Most people take that icon to be representative of hotels since they've already seen it so many times.
2. We debated the building approach, but we thought it may get confused with the "home" icon. And we didn't want to use icon+text in our design at this stage. We think the buildings approach gets even more confusing without a text label.
As I said, however, it's a bit of a subjective choice...
We hope that it's a clearer bed than what we originally started with.
With respect to seeing it from afar -- the contexts in which we are using the icon is for desktop and post-PC device user interfaces. Interfaces which aren't usually used from afar. Most users who are exposed to this icon will be looking at it from just two to three feet away.
To be perfectly honest, we didn't test for differently worded labels at all. So, we'd be outright lying if we said what you're asking us to.
We agree that we need to work on improving the design of the feature and we will be doing just that. “X seats left at this price” is a better label, but may be too long to fit for the way it is currently designed, so we will need to think about how we can best convey the information better.
Yep. We agree that we need to work on improving the design of the feature and we will be doing just that. “X seats left at this price” is a better label, but may be too long to fit for the way it is currently designed, so we will need to think about how we can best convey the information better.
Udo -- the practice of ramping prices up and down is called Yield Management and is a commonplace strategy for suppliers of perishable inventory such as airlines and hotels.
We wanted to our users to be able see how long a price point is going to remain available. Our hope is that most users will be able to make better decisions about whether to book immediately or to wait a little longer.
With respect to whether the price differences are huge or not, the prices are going to be higher. Travel is an extremely price-sensitive category and India is an extremely price-sensitive market. So, in our opinion, this feature lets users make better decisions.
Since the button seems to be causing some confusion, we'll see what we can do to best improve it.
My name is Hrush. I am one of Cleartrip's founders and I'd like to clarify how things actually work.
Firstly, the "X seats left" feature is not an 'algorithm' at all. It is a simple count of the number of 'seats remaining' at a specific price point for a specific flight departure.
In the example illustrated in the post, there is only a single seat left at a price point of Rs. 34,255. This does not mean that there is only one seat left on the flight, it means there is only one seat left at that specific price.
When the search was repeated for 2 travellers, the price per person increased to 35,746, and then increased to Rs. 37,008 per person when the search was done for 4 travellers.
Airline pricing is based on 'fare classes' or 'buckets'. Buckets typically work like this:
1. Each bucket is allocated a fixed number of seats.
2. Each bucket is associated with exactly one price point
3. When there are no more seats available in a bucket, seats from the next highest bucket are displayed and so on
At Cleartrip, we work hard to give our customers the best prices. We never have and never will engage in the "fake scarcity tactics" that this post accuses us of.
I'd also like to point out again that we have a tool tip on the button that clearly reads that there are 'X seats left at this price'.