Although it remains one of the most competitive, data-centric businesses around, the travel industry still tends to lag behind the most cutting-edge software and Internet technologies powering our favorite operating systems and apps.

To that end, it appears that Google is now looking to leverage its renowned ability to crunch vast amounts of data and present it in a consumer-friendly wrapper by quietly introducing something called Flight Explorer.

The tool has not been officially announced by Google, but it is nevertheless a fully functional tool that travelers can use to plan and purchase tickets for a trip. When you visit the site, it automatically detects your location and enters that city in the "from" search field. Alongside the from/to destination search fields, destination suggestions are presented with attractive photos paired with a roll-over graph offering airline ticket price information across a range of dates spanning two months. When a visitor makes a selection for a particular flight time and airline, the user is then taken to Google Flights, the company's existing airline ticket reservation tool.

While Google has yet to offer its usual strategic breakdown regarding how the new tool fits into its overall suite of services, A Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land that "Flight Explorer is a an experimental feature of Flight search that allow users to explore flight destinations. The feature enables users to consider multiple destinations and multiple days at once, all using live prices, quickly."

In some ways, the new Flight Explorer functions much like a more visual, and real-time data-enhanced Google Transit, the company's tool design to help users plan their routes using public transportation. This latest tool adds to Google's growing arsenal of location- and travel-oriented software solutions, which includes Maps and Latitude.