Expedia has successfully spun off TripAdvisor.com as its own public company. TripAdvisor.com is currently trading on the stock market with the ticker symbol TRIP. Currently TripAdvisor has a market cap of about $4 billion.

Expedia, Inc. (NASDAQ:EXPE) has announced today that they plan to spin off TripAdvisor.com off into a separate public company. The board has already signed off on the spin-off, but the deal is still pending based on a shareholder vote.

TripAdvisor now has Facebook Connect integrated within their website as they are now an instant personalization partner. When visiting TripAdvisor.com, you will find reviews left by friends and will see a map that shows places that your friends have visited. There is also a box on the right-hand side that shows which destinations are most popular with your friends through the Cities I’ve Visited app. [Facebook Blog]

When you search for a local venue, hotel, information about a city, or even a health condition on Google.com, you may find a result from Google.com itself at the very top. TripAdvisor, Yelp, CitySearch, and WebMD are not happy with the way that the links are displayed. With Google.com being the top result, it makes it even more of a challenge for the aforementioned websites to compete for ad revenue.