Kayak.com announced today the completion of a $196 financing round, which they will use to complete a merger with SideStep Inc. and to pursue a more aggressive global expansion. With the merger of Kayak.com and SideStep.com, ‘the world’s first travel search site’, they will have created the world’s 5th largest travel brand.

Both Kayak and SideStep are meta travel sites, and search hundreds of other travel websites including airlines, hotels, and sites such as Orbitz.com. The overlap of users between Kayak and SideStep is just around 10%, according to Kayak.

Combined, Kayak and SideStep will be a powerful force. Together they have more monthly unique visitors than Priceline, every airline except Southwest, and every hotel and rental car brand. It is estimated that consumers will conduct more than 33 million searches on Kayak.com and its affiliates in January 2008, which double their 16 million searches in January 2007. (more…)