The elite executives and creative professionals of the video game industry gathered at the Dice Summit in Las Vegas this week to talk about the art and business of video games. We posted videos and stories during the week about the various talks. Here’s the story in pictures from the summit and the Interactive Achievement Awards, which are the Oscars of the game industry.

For the fifth year in a row, comedian Jay Mohr hosted the Interactive Achievement Awards. He made a lot of jokes about the length of the awards, but his long monologue, laced with profanity, certainly stretched it out. The show will air on the Independent Film Channel.

Hosts of G4TV’s X-Play show Adam Sessler and Morgan Webb walked the red carpet before the award show and played to the paparazzi. Their show remains the most popular daily video game show on TV.

Doug Lowenstein retired from the top job at the Entertainment Software Association in 2006. But he returned to accept the Lifetime Achievement award from the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences.
Randy Pitchford, co-founder of Gearbox Software, got a chance to tell the story of his development studio, which hit the big time this fall with Borderlands, an original game that is on its way to selling three million copies. On his desk, Pitchford keeps a framed dollar bill which was the first that his company earned and is a reminder that his company is in business to make money as well as great games.

Richard Garriott and his guest, Laetitia Pichot de Cayeux, walked to red carpet. After taking off to travel in space to the International Space Station, Garriott announced at Dice that he had co-founded a new company, Portalarium, to make a social game platform and publish games on Facebook. He considers it to be his third major move in games, after starting Origin Systems and making massively multiplayer online games like Ultima Online.

Mark Cerny of Cerny Games was inducted into the Interactive Achievement Hall of Fame for his decades-long career in games. He has helped make more than 30 games ranging from his first title, Marble Madness, to Ratchet & Clank.

Joseph Olin is the president of the AIAS and organizer of the Dice Summit. He foresees a big year in traditional hardcore games yet also believes that social games are beginning to change the industry as well (we’ll post an interview with him soon).

Mark Skaggs was creative director on FarmVille. He and other members of the Zynga team were on hand to collect the first-ever award for best social game.
The top guys on Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed II game included writer Corey May (left) and creative director Patrice Desilets.
Greg Zeschuk of BioWare was on hand to give a toast to his company’s twin blockbusters, Dragon Age Origins and Mass Effect 2.
Jay Cohen is the president of development of Jerry Bruckheimer Games. He spent 13 years at Ubisoft but left to start Bruckheimer’s new game studio eight months ago. He said the company is knee-deep in research on its first games. You can expect them to have a definite Hollywood influence.
The team of thatgamecompany took home the prize for best casual game for their work on Flower, the dazzling PlayStation Network game where you play the wind in the dream of a flower in a decaying city. Accepting the award is Kellee Santiago. Creative director Jenova Chen is on the far left.
Last year, Jennifer MacLean became CEO of 38 Studios, whose founder is retired Red Sox baseball star Curt Schilling. They’re busy working on Copernicus, a massively multiplayer online game.
Brian Reynolds, chief designer at Zynga, offered tips on how to create hit social games, but he drew groans when he skipped a slide on how to make money doing so.

The team at Naughty Dog that made Uncharted 2: Among Thieves took home 10 awards, including Game of the Year. Richard Lemarchand, lead designer, on the  far left, gave a talk on how the company organizes itself in a way that pushes leadership down into the team members. There are no producers at Naughty Dog.
Rob Pardo, left, of Blizzard Entertainment poses at the opening night party with Chris Taylor, founder of Gas Powered Games. Taylor joked that the photo would be a nice contrast of a guy who makes a lot of money and a guy who doesn’t.
Rajesh Rao, chief executive of Dhruva Interactive, came all the way from India. His company has been making outsourced games for a wide variety of clients for many years. You’ll recognize Dhruva’s handiwork in the cars in the Forza Motorsport games.
Steve Wadsworth, head of Disney Interactive Media, gave the opening keynote at Dice. He talked about how Disney is making a big move into cross-platform games and, in a Q&A afterward, noted how he admired the Apple iPad and was making content for it.
Graham Hopper, head of Disney Interactive Studios, said that his teams are launching a bunch of cool games this year, ranging from the Split Second racing game to Tron Evolution and Epic Mickey.
Jesse Schell, a professor of game design at Carnegie Mellon University and head of Schell Games, gave the best talk at Dice as he talked about real-life games beyond Facebook.

John Schappert, chief operating officer at Electronic Arts, offered five tips on how to surmount the game industry’s challenges. Among them: don’t get too excited about the social gaming bubble.

Apple has stirred up yet another controversy over its often arbitrary App Store app rejection process. To all appearances, it has started purging all applications with “overtly sexual content” from the App Store.

The news first appeared when app developer Chillifresh discovered that its Wobble iBoobs application had been removed from the store. It reportedly received an email from Apple stating, “We have decided to remove any overtly sexual content from the App Store, which includes your application.” So far, Apple isn’t explicitly confirming that it’s removing all sexual apps, just saying that it removes inappropriate content when customers complain.

But it looks like there’s a real purge underway: TechCrunch found that some erotic apps have been removed, while others remain available. The Playboy app is still there, for instance, while several Maxim apps were removed, as pointed out by Business Insider.

This just gives more ammunition to the many critics of Apple’s App Store policies, and reaffirms blogger John Gruber’s assertion last week that the App Store is one of Apple’s biggest issues. If the store is supposed to be the primary means for getting content onto the iPhone (and soon the iPad), this schoolmarmish-ness really cripples those devices. And boy, won’t it be fun if Apple decides to police the iBookstore in a similar way.

On the other hand, if company goes through with it, I guess this will be one area where the mobile web has a definite advantage over the App Store — assuming those mobile web sites don’t run in Flash.

Apple has stirred up yet another controversy over its often arbitrary App Store app rejection process. To all appearances, it has started purging all applications with “overtly sexual content” from the App Store.

The news first appeared when app developer Chillifresh discovered that its Wobble iBoobs application had been removed from the store. It reportedly received an email from Apple stating, “We have decided to remove any overtly sexual content from the App Store, which includes your application.” So far, Apple isn’t explicitly confirming that it’s removing all sexual apps, just saying that it removes inappropriate content when customers complain.

But it looks like there’s a real purge underway: TechCrunch found that some erotic apps have been removed, while others remain available. The Playboy app is still there, for instance, while several Maxim apps were removed, as pointed out by Business Insider.

This just gives more ammunition to the many critics of Apple’s App Store policies, and reaffirms blogger John Gruber’s assertion last week that the App Store is one of Apple’s biggest issues. If the store is supposed to be the primary means for getting content onto the iPhone (and soon the iPad), this schoolmarmish-ness really cripples those devices. And boy, won’t it be fun if Apple decides to police the iBookstore in a similar way.

On the other hand, if company goes through with it, I guess this will be one area where the mobile web has a definite advantage over the App Store — assuming those mobile web sites don’t run in Flash.

It’s been nearly two weeks since the Super Bowl, but the stats behind one of the world’s biggest media spectacles keep pouring in. YouTube has just written about the impact some of the Super Bowl ads have had on its site, offering rare insight into just how much attention those million-dollar advertising spots will get you.

During the days following the Super Bowl, YouTube reported an 18,000% spike in queries for “Snickers” (no doubt spurred by their ad featuring Betty White and Abe Vigoda). YouTube also says that mobile queries for Doritos rose by 5,000% (note that the Snickers stat that was for YouTube’s entire property but Doritios was for mobile only  — it’s a bit strange that they aren’t giving an apples to apples comparison).

YouTube ran a week-long contest beginning on Super Bowl Sunday that invited users to choose their favorite ad using a special site called YouTube Ad Blitz, during which 2.9 million votes were cast (Doritos took the top spot).

YouTube mentions one other interesting stat: clicks on the site’s Promoted Videos, which allow users and brands to advertise their videos on the site, doubled over Super Bowl weekend.

After a bunch of early speculation, it was announced last week that Google has acquired Aardvark. It didn't surprise me one bit that Google wanted to own Aardvark. Aardvark is completely awesome. And I am going to miss lending a hand in building this amazing company.

About a year and a half ago I first met with Max Ventilla, founder and CEO of Aardvark, to talk about his company. That meeting was on a Friday. And after the meeting I rushed to get Max and his co-founders (Rob Spiro, Nathan Stoll and Damon Horowitz) in to meet my partners the following Monday. My partners had the same reaction to Aardvark that I did -- love at first sight. And so we quickly gave the team a term sheet to fund their Series A. But we weren't alone. In the period of two weeks, Max and team managed to wrangle a handful of term sheets from fantastic firms.

Why was there so much excitement about what Aardvark was doing? As I've written before, Aardvark manages to solve a major problem with search today -- search quality is going down while the utility of social relationships in answering subjective questions is going up. By tapping your friends, Aardvark is able to get you better answers to the questions you are actually asking with less bias. That's awfully valuable, as Google well knew. And rather than let Aardvark chip away at their search dominance, Google decided to bring them into the fold.

But the brilliance of the Aardvark service wasn't the only reason Google bought the company. Aardvark had managed to amass one of the most impressive collections of talent around. As I've seen again and again, great teams attract great talent. The rich get richer. And Aardvark was a perfect example of that. The extraordinary talent in the company made it possible to bring on increasingly impressive entrepreneurs, technologists, Ph.D's, business people. By the time Google bought Aardvark, there were dozens of talented folks involved in the company. Now those dozens of talented people will add to the collective horsepower of Google.

Aardvark is a fantastic example of why the Venture business is so much fun. I have the great good fortune to work with some of the smartest folks on the planet building amazing technology that will literally change the world. As jobs go, it doesn't get much better than that. Watching Aardvark get acquired by Google at such a young age is a bit like sending your kids off to college -- you are excited for them and proud of all that they have accomplished, but you know that you'll miss the chance to play a bigger role in the amazing stuff that's yet to come.

Congratulations to the entire entire Aardvark team. I'll miss you. Good luck at Google U.

Sedo, a domain marketplace, has brokered the largest sale of a .org domain to date. Brokered on behalf of A-1 National Advertising, the domain poker.org was sold to PokerCompany.com for the sum of $1 million. Prior to the sale of poker.org, the highest .org sale was $198,000 for engineering.org, followed by sexe.org which sold for $151,400. The sale price for poker.org is smaller than those of the largest .com sales, which rang in at $5.1 million for Toys.com, and $3 Million for the candy.com sale. Edit: Fund.com was the largest .com sale, raking in $10 million.

Domain registrations for .org’s have risen recently, up 11% in the first half of 2009 over the same period a year before according to pir.org Currently there are over 7 million .org domain registrations, making .org’s the third largest domain extension, trailing only .com and .net.

If you are still wondering why Google is pushing so hard with its new product Buzz, it is because it wants in on social traffic. For many sites on the Web, social traffic coming through Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace is beginning to rival, and in some cases overtake, search traffic as the single biggest source of traffic. This traffic comes from shared links, photos, and videos. By its own numbers, 5 billion pieces of content are shared on Facebook every month.

What isn’t easily appreciated is the extent to which such social sharing is tied to different identity and authentication platforms across the Web. If you can log into a site easily using your Facebook or Twitter account, it is easier to broadcast links from that site to your friends.

To get a sense of which services on the Web drive the most sharing, I asked Gigya for some stats. Gigya powers sharing widgets on more than 5,000 content sites, including ABC.com. NBA.com, PGA.com, Answers.com, and Reuters. Consumers can click a share button on these sites and send an article link, photo, or video via a menu of different services including Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Yahoo Mail, Gmail, and AOL. Over the past 30 days, people have shared almost a million items over the Gigya network. Facebook and Twitter dominate with about three quarters of all shared items between them. Here is how the services break down (note that these are relative numbers) :

Distribution of shared items
Facebook: 44%
Twitter: 29%
Yahoo:18%
MySpace:9%

It makes sense, people prefer to broadcast links rather than share them one at a time via email. Although Yahoo makes a strong third-place showing. When it comes to authentication, simply using your existing username and password to log into another site, Facebook is still the most popular via Facebook Connect, but only just barely. Google via Gmail and Yahoo are almost equally popular, at least on certain types of sites where people are just reading for themselves like news sites. On entertainment sites where people are more likely to share content, Facebook Connect makes up the majority of logins.

Here are the stats:

Share of Authentication By Platform:

News sites:
Facebook: 31%
Google: 30%
Yahoo: 25%
Twitter: 11%
AOL: 3%

Entertainment sites:
Facebook: 52%
Google: 17%
Yahoo: 12%
Twitter: 11%
MySpace: 7%
AOL: 1%

Facebook Chat is also a strong option, making up more than half of all live event chats measured by Gigya.

Live Event Chat:
Facebook: 56%
Twitter: 28%
Yahoo: 9%
MySpace: 7%

SFWeekly Web Editor Alexia Tsotsis spent some time early this morning trying out Chatroulette, a website that connects random strangers for a video chat. The results are unlikely to surprise you. Unless you are new to this whole Internet thing. Screen shots of some of her more entertaining chats are below the post.

Harkening back to the days of A/S/L, the random vidchat service Chatroulette is one of those online arenas where not being a white male looking to get off puts you in a definite minority. Founded by a 17 year-old Russian high school student named Andrew Ternovskiy, the service is a more successful Omegle, combining elements of the MTV show “Next” with vidchat capabilities.

Aspiring chatees click to play and as an escape latch you or your partner can hit “Next” anytime if you get bored, scared, or have to get back to work. The “Report video as inappropriate” button also seems to provide some comfort, but by judging by the nsfw fare served to me last night, doesn’t provide much of a threat.

I pressed “play” last night at around 3:00 am PST and after about 45 clicks on “Next” encountered 5 straight up penis shots, a lot of “camera disabled” chats, two women who automatically clicked “Next” once they figured out that I too was a female, and a lot of very grateful looking guys, including a Chinese “fan of Google” and a French guy in indoor sunglasses, who asked me whether “I was a more dominate lady or submissive woman” in the hope that I would be the former.

Out of the 10,920 of my fellow Chatroulette participants, my “Roulettees” were a good cross section of Internet humanity. And while I did not encounter the “suicide” hanging videos alluded to in many of the chats, things like “did you hear the one about the guy who shot himself in the bath tub,” were brought up in conversation quite a few times, as examples of just how crazy Chatroulette can get.

Anywhere you get a mass of people communicating uncensored (and yes much like 4chan.org, China has not yet blocked Chatroulette) will be subject to typical groupthink behavior like urban myths and requests for interaction better left to the casual encounters section of Craigslist. Nonetheless, the service’s potential for more substantial acts of communication (I ended up emailing screen caps of the Google search for “Tiananmen Square” as well as the “No Sense of Humor, Techcrunch is Blocked In China” article to the Chinese Google fan, for example) is formidable.

Chatroulette is what you’d expect it to be, micro-interactive reality TV with a large heaping of cybersex. While most people are (whether they admit it or not) voyeurs – the fact that Chatroulette lets the both participants see each other limits the site’s potential user base to the weirdos – and despite piquing VC Fred Wilson’s interest it doesn’t seem like there’s currently enough weirdos enough to turn the humble startup into something mainstream.

One “Roulettee,” when asked what he thought the service was most useful for, responded, “connecting with people around the world.” Yeah, and asking them to show you their boobs.

As you know, today is Valentine’s Day. As such, I thought it was the perfect time to write a love sonnet for my new favorite company: Expedia.com. Actually, I’ll do the opposite.

Seeing as it’s a long weekend in the United States (President’s Day is on Monday), I decided I was going to set up a little trip to get away with the girl I’m seeing. A few weeks ago, I set up all the plans for what I thought would be a nice, relaxing weekend. It’s actually been anything but relaxing. My mistake? Using Expedia to book it.

After a few hours of driving, we pulled into our destination yesterday and attempt to check-in to the hotel. Problem 1: they’ve never heard of us. My name is nowhere to be found in their reservation system. Problem 2: they were completely booked. Problem 3: even if there was a cancellation, there was a waiting list for a room because apparently, Expedia had done this exact thing to no fewer than four other couples — just at this hotel alone.

So what happened?

Well, it took me a couple hours to get a straight answer out of anyone, but apparently, the system that Expedia uses to book reservation with its partner hotels is a mixture of antiquated and just completely fucked up. Because it would be too much of a hassle, and more importantly, cost too much money, Expedia has an automated system for communicating with its partners. Sometimes this is done with an email, sometimes this is done with a fax. Yes, a fax.

In my case, Expedia’s system apparently faxed the reservation to the hotel I booked. It then claims it got a confirmation back that my hotel room was all set and ready for my arrival. The only problem? According to the hotel, not only did they not receive the fax, but obviously they never sent the confirmation back. And why would they? It turns out all their rooms had already been booked before I attempted to book mine through Expedia. Of course, according to Expedia, there were plenty of rooms available when I booked — I even had a many room options to choose from.

The icing on the Valentine’s Day cake though was my subsequent six calls to and from Expedia. For the first one, after waiting on hold for 45 minutes, I was told that according to their system, my reservation was indeed confirmed. I knew this would be Expedia’s stance because I received an email from Expedia a few days prior stating that it was confirmed.

After I made it very clear to the poor girl (poor, both for having to face my wrath, and working for this awful company) that there was definitely no room under my name at my supposedly booked hotel, she didn’t seem too clear about what to do. I was demanding a full refund (obviously) and demanding that they book me another room in the city and pay for that. She put me on hold so she could talk to her manager.

When she came back on 15 minutes later, she wanted to make sure I booked the room correctly in the first place. I demanded to speak to her superior. This guy was great (that’s sarcasm). Not only was he trying to convince me that this wasn’t Expedia’s fault, but he wasn’t sure they’d be able to reimburse me for the room that they had never actually booked for me, and that I clearly wasn’t going to be staying in. He said he’d have to call me back.

Meanwhile, I get a call from another Expedia agent whom the hotel had apparently called because again, this had happened a number of times just this day for the same hotel with Expedia. He wanted to let me know that the hotel was overbooked and my reservation wouldn’t be honored. Thanks buddy.

The other agent finally calls me back. Good news: he thinks he can refund what I paid for the hotel that I’m not staying at, but wants to make sure I want another room booked for me in the city. If so, they might take some of the refund to pay for that. At this point I start really yelling. On the street. With a lot of children around.

After a solid five minutes of verbal abuse from me including no shortage of swear words, he sees my point. But he still has to call his supervisor to okay any kind of deal he can cut. He needs to call me back again, but assures me that when he does, he’ll have another room for me and the refund in my account.

He calls me back. The good news: the refund has been processed. The bad news: there are no other rooms in the city that Expedia can book for me. Not one.

Further, if I am able to find my own room outside of Expedia, the company can’t do anything for me in terms of reimbursement. He is only authorized to offer me a $100 gift certificate to use for a future Expedia purchase. If there is anything in the world I want less at this point, I can’t think of it. I’m certainly never going to book another trip through this site again.

Hearing me still upset, he suggests that maybe if I book a more expensive place, Expedia can make up the difference. That’s a ridiculous proposal for a number of reasons, but the best is that there is no way I’m going to be able to find a hotel nicer than the one I had thought I had booked to stay at on Valentine’s Day weekend. The only options were going to be shittier ones — and those are probably taken too. So maybe Expedia was trying to trick me into paying me negative $500, I’m not sure.

At this point we’re almost 2 hours into my little romantic getaway so I ask for his supervisor’s number, his supervisor’s email, my reference number, anything he can give me. I hang up the phone.

I tried calling them. It’s a switchboard. No one seems clear as to who I should talk to.

So I write this now from my quaint (used kindly) little motel that I had to book myself, at a ridiculous rate because it was so last-minute on a busy weekend, with my own money. Never in my life have I had an experience as bad as I just did with an online company. This includes Comcast and AT&T. Expedia just made them look like models of business perfection.

Expedia, which was founded as a division of Microsoft in 1995, was later spun-off into its own company in the IPO-happy days of 1999. Ticketmaster then bought it in 2001, and eventually, it became a company under the IAC conglomerate. IAC spun it off again in 2005 as Expedia, Inc, which also includes the sites Hotels.com, TripAdvisor, HotWire, and others. In other words, the company’s history has been a mess.

Despite being an industry bicycle (everyone has had a ride), Expedia still manages to make $3 billion in revenues a year — undoubtedly helped by cases like mine where they try to make you pay for places you can’t even stay at because they’re can’t seem to figure out how to properly do a confirmation. Well, except if that confirmation is with one of their never-ending chain of superiors who need to confirm a Kleenex in the case of an employee sneeze.

And so ends my love story about Expedia. I write this now both because it’s a nice Valentine’s Day tale, but also as a warning to anyone using the service. A simple Google search yields results that show I’m hardly alone in my experience. In fact, the number of hate sites specifically about Expedia is quite impressive.

There are far too many other competent companies out there that do the same thing, including a number of startups. Kayak is the one you hear about the most, unfortunately, they have a deal to offer up Expedia results first. Feel free to leave your favorite travel startups in the comments, I’d really like to know the best alternatives.

I also write this because even if Barry Diller (Chairman) or some other higher-up sees this post and offers me a full reimbursement of my trip, I’m not accepting it at this point. They may not have ruined my Valentine’s Day, but it wasn’t for a lack of trying.

Dearest Expedia,

Happy Valentine’s Day.

It’s over.

Love,

MG

As you know, today is Valentine’s Day. As such, I thought it was the perfect time to write a love sonnet for my new favorite company: Expedia.com. Actually, I’ll do the opposite.

Seeing as it’s a long weekend in the United States (President’s Day is on Monday), I decided I was going to set up a little trip to get away with the girl I’m seeing. A few weeks ago, I set up all the plans for what I thought would be a nice, relaxing weekend. It’s actually been anything but relaxing. My mistake? Using Expedia to book it.

After a few hours of driving, we pulled into our destination yesterday and attempt to check-in to the hotel. Problem 1: they’ve never heard of us. My name is nowhere to be found in their reservation system. Problem 2: they were completely booked. Problem 3: even if there was a cancellation, there was a waiting list for a room because apparently, Expedia had done this exact thing to no fewer than four other couples — just at this hotel alone.

So what happened?

Well, it took me a couple hours to get a straight answer out of anyone, but apparently, the system that Expedia uses to book reservation with its partner hotels is a mixture of antiquated and just completely fucked up. Because it would be too much of a hassle, and more importantly, cost too much money, Expedia has an automated system for communicating with its partners. Sometimes this is done with an email, sometimes this is done with a fax. Yes, a fax.

In my case, Expedia’s system apparently faxed the reservation to the hotel I booked. It then claims it got a confirmation back that my hotel room was all set and ready for my arrival. The only problem? According to the hotel, not only did they not receive the fax, but obviously they never sent the confirmation back. And why would they? It turns out all their rooms had already been booked before I attempted to book mine through Expedia. Of course, according to Expedia, there were plenty of rooms available when I booked — I even had a many room options to choose from.

The icing on the Valentine’s Day cake though was my subsequent six calls to and from Expedia. For the first one, after waiting on hold for 45 minutes, I was told that according to their system, my reservation was indeed confirmed. I knew this would be Expedia’s stance because I received an email from Expedia a few days prior stating that it was confirmed.

After I made it very clear to the poor girl (poor, both for having to face my wrath, and working for this awful company) that there was definitely no room under my name at my supposedly booked hotel, she didn’t seem too clear about what to do. I was demanding a full refund (obviously) and demanding that they book me another room in the city and pay for that. She put me on hold so she could talk to her manager.

When she came back on 15 minutes later, she wanted to make sure I booked the room correctly in the first place. I demanded to speak to her superior. This guy was great (that’s sarcasm). Not only was he trying to convince me that this wasn’t Expedia’s fault, but he wasn’t sure they’d be able to reimburse me for the room that they had never actually booked for me, and that I clearly wasn’t going to be staying in. He said he’d have to call me back.

Meanwhile, I get a call from another Expedia agent whom the hotel had apparently called because again, this had happened a number of times just this day for the same hotel with Expedia. He wanted to let me know that the hotel was overbooked and my reservation wouldn’t be honored. Thanks buddy.

The other agent finally calls me back. Good news: he thinks he can refund what I paid for the hotel that I’m not staying at, but wants to make sure I want another room booked for me in the city. If so, they might take some of the refund to pay for that. At this point I start really yelling. On the street. With a lot of children around.

After a solid five minutes of verbal abuse from me including no shortage of swear words, he sees my point. But he still has to call his supervisor to okay any kind of deal he can cut. He needs to call me back again, but assures me that when he does, he’ll have another room for me and the refund in my account.

He calls me back. The good news: the refund has been processed. The bad news: there are no other rooms in the city that Expedia can book for me. Not one.

Further, if I am able to find my own room outside of Expedia, the company can’t do anything for me in terms of reimbursement. He is only authorized to offer me a $100 gift certificate to use for a future Expedia purchase. If there is anything in the world I want less at this point, I can’t think of it. I’m certainly never going to book another trip through this site again.

Hearing me still upset, he suggests that maybe if I book a more expensive place, Expedia can make up the difference. That’s a ridiculous proposal for a number of reasons, but the best is that there is no way I’m going to be able to find a hotel nicer than the one I had thought I had booked to stay at on Valentine’s Day weekend. The only options were going to be shittier ones — and those are probably taken too. So maybe Expedia was trying to trick me into paying me negative $500, I’m not sure.

At this point we’re almost 2 hours into my little romantic getaway so I ask for his supervisor’s number, his supervisor’s email, my reference number, anything he can give me. I hang up the phone.

I tried calling them. It’s a switchboard. No one seems clear as to who I should talk to.

So I write this now from my quaint (used kindly) little motel that I had to book myself, at a ridiculous rate because it was so last-minute on a busy weekend, with my own money. Never in my life have I had an experience as bad as I just did with an online company. This includes Comcast and AT&T. Expedia just made them look like models of business perfection.

Expedia, which was founded as a division of Microsoft in 1995, was later spun-off into its own company in the IPO-happy days of 1999. Ticketmaster then bought it in 2001, and eventually, it became a company under the IAC conglomerate. IAC spun it off again in 2005 as Expedia, Inc, which also includes the sites Hotels.com, TripAdvisor, HotWire, and others. In other words, the company’s history has been a mess.

Despite being an industry bicycle (everyone has had a ride), Expedia still manages to make $3 billion in revenues a year — undoubtedly helped by cases like mine where they try to make you pay for places you can’t even stay at because they’re can’t seem to figure out how to properly do a confirmation. Well, except if that confirmation is with one of their never-ending chain of superiors who need to confirm a Kleenex in the case of an employee sneeze.

And so ends my love story about Expedia. I write this now both because it’s a nice Valentine’s Day tale, but also as a warning to anyone using the service. A simple Google search yields results that show I’m hardly alone in my experience. In fact, the number of hate sites specifically about Expedia is quite impressive.

There are far too many other competent companies out there that do the same thing, including a number of startups. Kayak is the one you hear about the most, unfortunately, they have a deal to offer up Expedia results first. Feel free to leave your favorite travel startups in the comments, I’d really like to know the best alternatives.

I also write this because even if Barry Diller (Chairman) or some other higher-up sees this post and offers me a full reimbursement of my trip, I’m not accepting it at this point. They may not have ruined my Valentine’s Day, but it wasn’t for a lack of trying.

Dearest Expedia,

Happy Valentine’s Day.

It’s over.

Love,

MG