Well, it would be competitive for Marriot or Sheraton to launch a new company to compete with Expedia or Orbitz. It is somewhat less competitive for them to buy a startup that is already doing that, but if they gave the startup a lot of money, so it could better compete with giants, then that would help increase competition. But to buy a startup only because you want some leverage against Expedia and Orbitz, and to let that startup die, is unfortunate in several ways. It wastes the efforts of a lot of good people, and it allows the total amount of competition in the system to decrease.
