Google Incorporation plans to buy one of the Web‘s key providers of airline travel software for $700m, potentially raising new antitrust concerns for the world‘s largest Internet search engine.

Google said on Friday that it had agreed to buy privately-owned ITA Software, in a move that Google said would allow it to improve the way consumers find flight and fare information online.What we‘re going to do is to build new flight search tools that focus on end-users,” Google’s Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Eric Schmidt said in a conference call with analysts and members of the press.

He said that Google had no plans to sell airline tickets to consumers and that Google planned to honour all existing agreements that ITA has with its partners.

The British Broadcasting Corporation reported on Friday, that the deal should allow Google to match innovations made by Microsoft Corporation, whose recently re-launched Bing search engine had gained share by focusing on a handful of specific search categories like travel and shopping.The deal, which was reported to be in the works for weeks, had unnerved travel industry players worried that Google could end up wielding too much influence in the sector.

ITA, which had roughly 500 employees, provided software that organised flight information like fares and flight times. The company was a major source of information about airfares to the aviation industry, used by airlines, travel agents and other sites including AMR Corp‘s American Airlines, Continental Airlines, Hotwire, Kayak, Orbitz and Microsoft‘s Bing.

Google beat out reported bidders Expedia, Kayak.com and Travelport.

On a conference call on Friday, Google executives called the deal “pro-competitive” and “pro-consumer,” but said it expected that United States regulators would examine the deal‘s implications closely.”I would expect that it would be a significant review,” said Schmidt. He declined to estimate when the deal would close.The ITA deal came shortly after Google closed its $750m acquisition of mobile advertising firm, AdMob. That deal was held up for several months by regulators, but ultimately approved when the Federal Trade Commission concluded that Apple Incorporation‘s nascent mobile ad business would keep the market competitive.Antitrust lawyers said they expected the Google-ITA deal to be scrutinised by regulators, but ultimately approved.”