In a leftfield move, Priceline has agreed to buy metasearch engine Kayak for $1.8 billion.
The deal was announced at the close of the public financial markets today in New York.
The transaction values Kayak at $1.8 billion ($1.65 billion net of cash acquired, says a statement) or $40 per share of Kayak, with Priceline paying "approximately $500 million of the consideration in cash and $1.3 billion in equity and assumed stock options".
Kayak finally managed to get its IPO off the ground in July this year, ending an 21-month wait from its original announcement in November 2010 that it wanted to go public.
The board of both companies have "unanimously approved the transaction", the statement continues, but a vote of Kayak's shareholders and regulatory approvals will take place shortly.
The deal is expected to close by late in the first quarter of 2013.
It also eclipses by some considerable distance the other major deal to take place in the past few years in travel technology - that of Google's acquisition of ITA Software in the summer of 2010 for $700 million.
Kayak's existing management team will remain in place and will run the company as an independent unit within the Priceline Group.
Priceline CEO and president Jeff Boyd says:
Perhaps central to the strategy behind the deal is in the global expansion of the Kayak brand.
Priceline says it can assist Kayak "to build a global online travel brand", the one wrinkly area in an otherwise mostly successful Kayak story.
Despite growing quickly (including buying Sidestep) and then pretty much dominating the US travel search scene through the 2000s and up to its IPO this year, Kayak has not made much of a dent outside of North America.
Kayak bought European travel search brand Swoodoo in early-2010 for an undisclosed fee, but elsewhere in Europe it has struggled against the likes of Skyscanner et al.
Given Priceline's extraordinary success with acquisitions such as that of Booking.com (considered by some to be the most profitable travel deal of the 2000s), perhaps Kayak's rivals elsewhere around the world will finally consider it a significant threat.
Kayak CEO and co-founder Steve Hafner adds:
UPDATE:
So, if international is to become a focus, what does one of Kayak's significant competitors think about the deal?
Skyscanner CEO Gareth Williams says: