The problem is the alternatives to Bookingdotcom are worse, for both flight and hotels.
Google and many other services direct you to the hotel itself, which means you need to create an account at the hotel's and enter your cc data... so yeah, tough luck if the hotel's 1990 era website gets hacked. Meanwhile, for Bookingdotcom, I enter my data once, don't have to worry about newsletter spam for the hotels, or my credit card data being exfiltrated. And same for airfare or train rides that can't be booked on Deutsche Bahn.
Hmm, had some fun positive experiences with Kiwi.com. They are also shady as f by constantly combining solo tickets and other stuff, but their app was awesome and pretty useful for checking in and keeping up to date on things.
Google and many other services direct you to the hotel itself, which means you need to create an account at the hotel's and enter your cc data... so yeah, tough luck if the hotel's 1990 era website gets hacked. Meanwhile, for Bookingdotcom, I enter my data once, don't have to worry about newsletter spam for the hotels, or my credit card data being exfiltrated. And same for airfare or train rides that can't be booked on Deutsche Bahn.