Kayak Asks Microsoft's Bing Travel to Stop Being a Copycat

(MoneyWatch)  It looks like the travel metasearch wars are heating up, and this time, it's being handled like a third grade fight. Kayak is accusing Microsoft's Bing Travel (formerly Farecast) of copying Kayak's interface. I believe the conversation went something like this:

Kayak: Stop copying me Bing: Stop copying me Kayak: Come on, quit it! Bing: Come on, quit it! Kayak: You're a jerk Bing: You're a jerk

In the end, Kayak called Bing a bunch of bad names. Bing got bored and simply said, "I'm rubber, you're glue. Whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you." Ok, maybe it didn't devolve that quickly.

The reality is that yes, the sites look very similar, but then again, so do all the metasearch sites. What do you think? Can you tell the difference?

Kayak really hit on a great design when they launched (that's the one on top, by the way), and many others have been borrowing from them since day one. I'm not sure why this has been the incident to push Kayak's button, but maybe they're scared that Bing may actually give them a run for their money.

It'll be a fun fight to watch. We all know that Microsoft never backs down from a fight, but Kayak is pretty feisty itself.