HOUSTON – Flying somewhere? Google has a new website pointing you to the cheapest flights without loading you down with confusing car rental offers and advertisements.

It’s called Google Flights . It just launched Tuesday, so how does it stack up against the now-traditional Orbitz, Hotwire, and Travelocity?

You’ll notice right off the bat, Google’s flight search is clean, easy to use, and it’s not loaded down with confusing options or features. They don’t try to “up sell” you. In fact, Google’s not trying to sell you anything at all.

That’s because Google Flights is not partnered with airlines or other companies. Its existence is the result of Google buying out ITA Software, which was simply an airline pricing database service.

What does this mean to you? Easy-to-find flights.

Simply give it your origin and destination cities along with your travel dates, and Google Flights shows you the cheapest flights. As with most other travel websites, you can restrict it to certain airlines or only flights that are non-stop.

What makes it fast? It uses Google’s instant-search functionality. Any changes you make to your flight are instantly displayed. It doesn’t load a new webpage every time, which makes it quick to see how a Thursday flight versus a Friday flight will affect your pricing.

Now, can it actually save you money compared to the other dozen travel websites that are out there? Yes and no.

Yes: It’s not restricted to certain airlines because it doesn’t have partnerships. This means it will show you the lowest rate it can find no matter what, where as some websites will block certain airlines because they have a partnership (or are sponsored by) another airline. I ran a test. With both Google and Priceline.com I found the same round-trip $202 flight.

No: It doesn’t offer bundles like hotel/car rental.

So in the end, it won’t save you hundreds of dollars, but it will make your search a lot easier, and when it’s time to buy, it links you directly to the airline instead of a third party website.

Google says because it’s new, it doesn’t have all the cities and airlines possible, but it’s working on it.

On the web: http://www.google.com/flights

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Article source: http://www.myfoxhouston.com/dpp/morning_news/my_tech_guy/110914-google-flights-easily-find-cheap-airfare