Kayak today announced a filing registration on Form S-1 with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in proposition of an initial public offering.

Securities offered will be dependent on the market conditions and other factors during the offering, as well as the number of shares to be offered and price range. Joint book-running managers for the offering will be Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank Securities, as well as Piper Jaffray, Stifel Nicolaus Weisel and Pacific Crest Securities as co-managers.

The registration may have been filed but it has not yet been approved, and thus, securities shall not be sold unless the registration statement becomes effective.  But what’s interesting about the Kayak approach to an IPO is its long-term goals around growth and gaining market share.  Kayak’s been pushing its search and recommendation tool hard in recent months, especially on the mobile front.

Kayak is part of the coalition going up against Google’s acquistition of ITA, the database most web-based travel tools tap into to power their own results.  This matter was addressed in the filings for Kayak’s IPO intentions, saying the purchase could interfere with third-party tools such as its own.  When it comes to access and repurposing of data, the travel industry is among the first to have to contend the likes of Google in terms of the monetization of such data.  Controlling issues on Google’s part could mean major industry shifts affecting competitors and consumers alike, though Google insists its plans for ITA will not disrupt the manner in which third party services access and utilize that data.  It is, after all, justifying its actions for the greater good of search.

A review over at AllThingsD notes that Kayak isn’t as reliant on search as we may think, turing to its loyal user base as a direct and effective mechanism for handling queries.  Kayak’s also generating a good sum of ad revenue from dealings with Google’s AdSense, so it’s only a matter of time until we see how the travel industry and search advertising will ultimately be affected by these indistry developments.