Nearly eleven months ago the Silverback Marketing Round-up for September 16, 2011 discussed Google’s acquisition of the online review website Zagat. Part of the reason that move was made by Google was its failed attempt at originally trying to purchase one of Zagat’s primary competitors Yelp. The recent release of Yelp’s second quarter earnings for 2012 had to catch the attention of Google since Yelp is performing very well. Therefore, is the latest acquisition of Frommer’s by Google simply an extension of the Zagat purchase or a response to Yelp’s success?

John Wiley and Sons, Inc. issued a press release Friday, August 10 that it was going to sell all of its travel assets to Google. Those assets include Frommer’s, a service that was founded back in the 1950s by Arthur Frommer to provide its clientele with budget travel guides. Today Frommer’s not only publishes its travel guide but also has a travel website with plenty of informative content.

This could prove to be an outstanding move by Google as it continues to develop its hotel and travel service. Considering Frommer’s has been in existence for over half a century it possesses a wealth of information, providing Google the opportunity to give its users access to loads of travel content.

Google has been wise to maintain the Zagat brand after the acquisition last year. Therefore, it is probably safe to assume that Google will follow that same theory with its handling of the Frommer’s brand due to Frommer’s impeccable reputation in the travel industry. Google will be able to use the travel content, website and mobile apps from Frommer’s to dramatically improve the hotel and travel service it currently provides for Google users. What could really be interesting is observing how Google uses these two services moving forward, especially if Google designs a method to integrate Frommer’s and Zagat into one unified brand.