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Frommer’s Travel Guides Will Stay Alive as Arthur Frommer Buys Them Back from Google

After reports that Google had quietly killed the print line of Frommer’s Travel Guides, the guidebooks have been given a new life as their creator has decided to buy back the brand. The AP repor...
Frommer’s Travel Guides Will Stay Alive as Arthur Frommer Buys Them Back from Google
Written by Josh Wolford
  • After reports that Google had quietly killed the print line of Frommer’s Travel Guides, the guidebooks have been given a new life as their creator has decided to buy back the brand.

    The AP reports that 83-year-old Arthur Frommer has reacquired the rights to his famed travel guidebooks from Google, and he plans to keep them alive in both print and ebook format.

    “It’s a very happy time for me,” says Frommer. “We will be publishing the Frommer travel guides in ebook and print formats and will also be operating the travel site Frommers.com.”

    Google bought Frommer’s back in August of 2012 from publisher John Wiley & Sons. The price of that deal was undisclosed, but reports indicate that it was somewhere around $22 million.

    Just a couple of weeks ago, reportes emerged that Google was killing the print line of the guidebooks – the last one having bee published in December of 2012.

    When Google bought the Frommer’s brand, they made it clear that they would incorporate its content into Zagat, and spread it among various Google services. The status of the print versions was always up in the air, and it appears that Google did exactly what they intended to do – grab the content and kill the rest.

    But Arthur Frommer obviously didn’t want to see that part of the brand die.

    Google confirmed that Frommer had reacquired the Frommer’s brand, and noted that the content had already been incorporated into many Google services, including Google+.

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