> What I like about google flights is how minimally commercial it is, it really looks just like its reporting fares, not flashing promoted bundles of things in your face.

Exactly! I use it because it is the craigslist of flights. I don't want to be sold a zillion things, I want to simply plug in the trips I'm considering and view the best available options. Flights is great for that!

I've had exactly one experience with Expedia. I'm firmly in the "book directly" camp for all the reasons you mention but my wife booked a hotel in Beijing with them.

We travel from where we are in China to Beijing, show up to the hotel, and they have no idea who we are. They're really apologetic but they show us the Expedia interface they have that definitely doesn't have us on it, we double-check our booking and make sure we're at the right place, etc.

So we call Expedia. They're like "Oh so sorry, we'll have to call the hotel. Please hold." They come back and say no one answered. We're standing there with the front desk staff in front of the phone and we all saw it very obviously not ring. We confirm the number with the staff, they say they'll try again. Still nothing. They hang up on us.

We call the hotel's number from our own phone, it rings.

We call Expedia back and try again. They try calling the hotel a few more times and finally tell us there's nothing they can do. So I tell them to just cancel the reservation then since it's obviously useless.

They tell us they'll have to escalate it to some other department who will contact the hotel and determine whether we're eligible to cancel without penalty due to the short timeframe for the cancellation. I told them if the charge hit my credit card I'd dispute it, but they're welcome to do whatever they feel is necessary.

So in summary: Booked hotel. They did not put booking through. They were unable to rectify the situation. They told us they may choose to charge us anyway. It cost me like $15 in international roaming charges.

You have support with Expedia. Do you have it with Google?