Did Google just take a monster step towards becoming an OTA?

There's been a lot of press the past couple days on Google's licensing deal with Room 77.  Some articles have been a bit bold in claiming that Google is entering the hotel booking business as an OTA. This would actually mean Google itself is transacting hotel bookings, which doesn't seem to be the case (just yet?).

There's also been a lot of hype over the big increase in Google's hotel content (photos, reviews, etc.) to make its search results resemble those of Priceline and Expedia, for example.  If I'm not mistaken though, this is part of a larger initiative to increase local business content across the board and isn't focused exclusively on hotels just for the sake of making them more bookable on Google search results.

But one thing is for sure . . . the more enhanced content Google adds, the more likely customers may begin their hotel search on Google versus the OTA sites.  And with the addition of Room 77's extensive database of hotel level information such as room views and floor plans, as well as its advanced hotel search algorithms, Google just may have made its biggest step yet in possibly becoming a full end-to-end hotel search and booking engine (and in the process eventually trumping TripAdvisor and OTAs).

I remain doubtful Google would get that low in the purchase funnel though.  My guess is they are amassing the best possible content at the hotel level in a drive to become the undisputed starting point for consumers doing a hotel search.  Over time, Google's hotel search volumes will increase, and if they can simultaneously ramp up ad spending from the non usual suspects (i.e. more hotels spending on adwords and not just the OTAs), it's plain simple math Google can squeeze billions more out of the travel vertical than it already makes today.

For now though, I can't help but wonder how Priceline and Expedia, some of Google's biggest adwords customers, feel about Google's licensing deal with Room 77 and what that might foreshadow.