I don't fully disagree, but you have to realize that there are a great number of people and places that are not hooked up to the internet, due to geography, politics, history, or other reasons.
Some of the best restaurants, hotels, and other experiences in the world are not reachable via an online reservation system.
The place I stayed last weekend can only be reserved by phone. Not because the owners luddites, but to keep out the bargain hunting riff-raff. There was a piece on CBS News a few weeks ago about a restaurant in Maine that's so popular you can only make a reservation by mail.
Sure hotels.com and opentable.com may nail the 80% of what's popular to the kinds of people who go to those sorts of places. But this world is so much bigger and more interesting than the internet or even Google can imagine.
For me the killed Duplex app will be when it's able to make a reservation for me in a language I don't speak. But even though its lost the "beta" badge, Google Translate still isn't ready for primetime.[0]
[0] I say this based on the feedback from the professional translators I work with daily. I put Google Translate text in my work as placeholders, and they have to then re-translate the projects correctly before they can be published.
Would raising the prices be enough to weed out the barfain hunting riff raff? That phone only model just sounds like an excise or a bias against young people who tend to use computers more
Some of the best restaurants, hotels, and other experiences in the world are not reachable via an online reservation system.
The place I stayed last weekend can only be reserved by phone. Not because the owners luddites, but to keep out the bargain hunting riff-raff. There was a piece on CBS News a few weeks ago about a restaurant in Maine that's so popular you can only make a reservation by mail.
Sure hotels.com and opentable.com may nail the 80% of what's popular to the kinds of people who go to those sorts of places. But this world is so much bigger and more interesting than the internet or even Google can imagine.
For me the killed Duplex app will be when it's able to make a reservation for me in a language I don't speak. But even though its lost the "beta" badge, Google Translate still isn't ready for primetime.[0]
[0] I say this based on the feedback from the professional translators I work with daily. I put Google Translate text in my work as placeholders, and they have to then re-translate the projects correctly before they can be published.