Speculation over whether Google would buy ITA Software, the developer of the QPX shopping software that revolutionized airfare shopping, swirled throughout the travel industry for more than two months. Now that Google has confirmed that it intends to buy the Cambridge, MA-based technology company, a new wave of speculation is swirling over what Google intends to do with it.

Is Google going to set up shop as the ultimate online travel agency? Will it create a “game changer” in the industry, as some have predicted?

Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, has been vague about the company’s intentions. He has expressed frustration with the online air fare shopping process, leading some industry pundits to note that more than a few of the online sites he has likely used are powered by ITA. He has complained that air fares change all the time, but that problem cannot be solved by ITA; the airlines control those changes, not websites.

Schmidt described possible deployments of ITA’s technology that sounded very much like Google was planning to launch a better travel meta search site, similar to Kayak. But he quickly nixed that idea, saying what Google had in mind would not resemble anything currently in the marketplace.

And he said that Google would not get into the business of selling travel.

While some observers believe that no company would buy airfare search technology for $700 million unless it intended to sell airfares, it’s important to remember that Google has never sold anything except advertising and telephone services. It bought YouTube for $1.65 billion with no clear idea of how it would be monetized. Eventually, it figured out a way. Wherever billions of pairs of eyes gather, Google has figured out a way to make money.

On the other hand, Carol Rheem, a PhoCusWright analyst, may have had the quote of the day recently when she noted that even airlines haven’t figured out how to make money by selling airline tickets. So the sale and fulfillment of air travel would not be attractive to Google.

Norm Rose, president of Travel Tech Consulting Inc. in Belmont, Calif., believes that Google will harness ITA’s technology to search air fares in a new way. Rather than adhere to the formula of departure airport, date and time to launch a search, Google/ITA might ask different questions, such as “How much money do you want to spend?”

Rose also suggests that Google might use ITA to combine information search with live fares and inventory; integrate Google calendar with ITA to allow searches based on a user’s schedule, and integrate Adwords with travel search to provide optimal positioning of fares for advertisers.

All of those ideas make more sense – and fit in with the Google way of doing business -- than the notion of Google becoming a seller of travel.