Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2013/04/04/google_hands_frommer_to_arthur_frommer/
Guide man Frommer buys his name back from Google, plans eBooks
Presumably nobody will seek the content in Google+
Posted in Legal, 4th April 2013 14:29 GMT
Google has handed the rights to the Frommer brand of travel guides back to Arthur Frommer, after the Chocolate Factory snapped it up from publisher Wiley just last year.
The Choc Factory said that it had picked out the bits of Frommer it wanted for its own services and was now giving the brand back to Arthur for an undisclosed payment.
"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.
"We can confirm that we have returned the Frommer's brand to its founder and are licensing certain travel content to him."
Frommer, 83, told the Associated Press that he would return to publishing his name-branded travel guides in ebook and print formats and running the Frommers.com website.
"It's a very happy time for me," he said.
He originally sold the brand all the way back in 1977 to Simon & Schuster, twenty years after his first guidebook Europe on 5 Dollars a Day was self-published.
The whole deal with Google is a bit mystifying, since the content the ad giant nabbed from Frommer will go out of date in not too distant future and just last month there were reports that production of Frommer books was going to be shut down. However, fans of the guides will no doubt be as chuffed as Frommer is that the series will continue. ®