Otalo.com (pronounced ō·tal·ō) was a fare aggregator and

metasearch engine A metasearch engine (or search aggregator) is an online information retrieval tool that uses the data of a web search engine to produce its own results. Metasearch engines take input from a user and immediately query search engines for results. S ...

for

vacation rentals A vacation rental is the renting out of a furnished apartment, house, or professionally managed resort-condominium complex on a temporary basis to tourists as an alternative to a hotel. The term ''vacation rental'' is mainly used in the US. Other ...

, launched in 2009 by Bear Tierkel and Mike Giles in Amerherst, Massachusetts. It enabled its users to search across different vacation rental advertising sites using a single search.

History

Before conceiving Otalo in 2009, Giles was previously the founder of the social bookmarking site

Furl Furl (from File Uniform Resource Locators) was a free social bookmarking website that allowed members to store searchable copies of webpages and share them with others. Every member received 5 gigabytes of storage space. The site was founded by ...

(acquired by

LookSmart LookSmart is an American search advertising, content management, online media, and technology company. It provides search, machine learning and chatbot technologies as well as pay-per-click and contextual advertising services. LookSmart also li ...

in 2004). Tierkel was previously the co-founder of the social citizenship site Localocracy (later sold to

Huffington Post ''HuffPost'' (formerly ''The Huffington Post'' until 2017 and sometimes abbreviated ''HuffPo'') is an American progressive news website, with localized and international editions. The site offers news, satire, blogs, and original content, and ...

), and former chief marketing officer of the enterprise software company PeopleSoft. They came up with the name of the site, Otalo, by combining the Zen symbol enzo ("O") with the Finnish word for house ("talo") after having found so many website names already taken. The site launched in 2009 with over 200,000 searchable vacation rental listings. In February 2012, Otalo increased its search index to include 46 vacation rental websites, resulting in over 1.6 million vacation rental listings in 164 countries.

References

External links

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Booking Guide
{{DEFAULTSORT:Otalo.com Vacation rental Metasearch engines Amherst, Massachusetts American travel websites Online companies of the United States Hospitality companies of the United States Hospitality companies established in 2009 Real estate companies established in 2009 Internet properties established in 2009