Just a year after purchasing the guidebook, Google has decided to sell Frommer's back to Frommer himself.
"It's a very happy time for me," said the 83-year-old Arthur Frommer to The Associated Press. "We will be publishing the Frommer travel guides in ebook and print formats and will also be operating the travel site Frommers.com."
Skift.com reported last month that Google, which had purchased the Frommer brand last year for a reported $22 million was "quietly pulling the plug" on print publication of Frommer travel guides.
However, though Google has returned the brand to its founder, they will still have some control over certain aspects.
"We've spent the last several months integrating the travel content we acquired from Wiley into Google+ Local and our other Google services," the firm said in an emailed statement, according to The Register of England. Adding, "We can confirm that we have returned the Frommer's brand to its founder and are licensing certain travel content to him."
Webpronews.com reports that "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, Frommer didn't want to see that part of his brand, his book, "put out to pasture" or "laid to rest"
The interesting part of this deal is that Frommer is taking back control of his self-named series after originally selling the rights in 1977, to Simon & Schuster, twenty years after his first guidebook Europe on 5 Dollars a Day was self-published.
The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but many experts believe Google sold the brand at a loss.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
