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The Ariau Towers is an abandoned boutique hotel in Brazil. It is located 60 km northwest of Manaus on the Rio Negro , a major tributary of the Amazon River . The concept for the property was that of Dr. Francisco Ritta Bernardino. The property featured 6 towers, with all 291 rooms elevated from the rain forest floor by approximately 10-20m and connected by approximates 5 miles (8.0 km) of catwalks. Amenities included two restaurants and three swimming pools.

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62-537: The hotel complex was one of the oldest and largest jungle lodges in the Amazon. It became known for its luxury accommodations and celebrity guests. Describing it as "the ultimate treehouse", travel writer Patricia Schulz included the hotel as one of her " 1,000 Places to See Before You Die ". On the other hand, the editors of Frommer's South America severely criticized the hotel for its "mass-market" offerings and its lack of environmental sensitivity, calling it "all that

124-516: A public company via an initial public offering, listing the company on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker symbol GOOG. At that time Page, Brin and Schmidt agreed to work together at Google for 20 years, until the year 2024. The company offered 19,605,052 shares at a price of $ 85 per share. Shares were sold in an online auction format using a system built by Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse , underwriters for

186-517: A $ 250,000 investment. Google received money from two other angel investors in 1998: Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos , and entrepreneur Ram Shriram . Page and Brin had first approached Shriram, who was a venture capitalist, for funding and counsel, and Shriram invested $ 250,000 in Google in February 1998. Shriram knew Bezos because Amazon had acquired Junglee, at which Shriram was the president. It

248-598: A budget. It was the first travel guide to show Americans that they could afford to travel in Europe. Frommer returned to the United States and began practicing law. During that time, he continued to write and also began to self-publish guidebooks to additional destinations, including New York, Mexico, Hawaii, Japan and the Caribbean. In 1977, Frommer’s trademark was sold to Simon & Schuster , Inc. Pearson bought

310-497: A chief executive officer, which had been made verbally during investment negotiations. Eric was not initially enthusiastic about joining Google either, as the company's full potential had not yet been widely recognized at the time, and as he was occupied with his responsibilities at Novell where he was CEO. As part of him joining, Eric agreed to buy $ 1 million of Google preferred stocks as a way to show his commitment and to provide funds Google needed. On August 19, 2004, Google became

372-456: A citation to Li's earlier RankDex patent; Li later went on to create the Chinese search engine Baidu . Eventually, they changed the name to Google ; the name of the search engine was a misspelling of the word googol , a very large number written 10 (1 followed by 100 zeros), picked to signify that the search engine was intended to provide large quantities of information. Google

434-461: A larger percentage of control over the company to themselves. Larry and Sergey however insisted on taking investments from both. Both venture companies finally agreed to investing jointly $ 12.5 million each due to their belief in Google's great potential and through the mediation of earlier angel investors Ron Conway and Ram Shriram who had contacts in the venture companies. In March 1999, the company moved its offices to Palo Alto, California , which

496-481: A meeting with Page and Brin and his Granite co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim. The meeting was set for 8 a.m. at the front porch of David's home in Palo Alto and it had to be brief because Andy had another meeting at Cisco, where he now worked after the acquisition, at 9 a.m. Andy briefly tested a demo of the website, liked what he saw, and then went back to his car to grab the check. David Cheriton later also joined in with

558-428: A memo throughout the company that argued bias and " Google's Ideological Echo Chamber " clouded their thinking about diversity and inclusion, and that it is also biological factors, not discrimination alone, that cause the average woman to be less interested than men in technical positions. Google CEO Sundar Pichai accused Damore of violating company policy by "advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace", and he

620-410: A monopoly on the market harming publishers, advertisers, and consumers. In 2022, Google began accepting requests for the removal of phone numbers, physical addresses and email addresses from its search results. It had previously accepted requests for removing confidential data only, such as Social Security numbers, bank account and credit card numbers, personal signatures, and medical records. Even with

682-1093: A multitude of products and services beyond Google Search , many of which hold dominant market positions. These products address a wide range of use cases, including email ( Gmail ), navigation and mapping ( Waze , Maps and Earth ), cloud computing ( Cloud ), web navigation ( Chrome ), video sharing ( YouTube ), productivity ( Workspace ), operating systems ( Android ), cloud storage ( Drive ), language translation ( Translate ), photo storage ( Photos ), videotelephony ( Meet ), smart home ( Nest ), smartphones ( Pixel ), wearable technology ( Pixel Watch and Fitbit ), music streaming ( YouTube Music ), video on demand ( YouTube TV ), AI ( Google Assistant and Gemini ), machine learning APIs ( TensorFlow ), AI chips ( TPU ), and more. Discontinued Google products include gaming ( Stadia ), Glass , Google+ , Reader , Play Music , Nexus , Hangouts , and Inbox by Gmail . Google's other ventures outside of internet services and consumer electronics include quantum computing ( Sycamore ), self-driving cars ( Waymo , formerly

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744-480: A research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were both PhD students at Stanford University in California. The project initially involved an unofficial "third founder", Scott Hassan , the original lead programmer who wrote much of the code for the original Google Search engine, but he left before Google was officially founded as a company; Hassan went on to pursue a career in robotics and founded

806-574: A service which searches the text found in books in its database and shows limited previews or and the full book where allowed. Google expanded its search services to include shopping (launched originally as Froogle in 2002), finance (launched 2006), and flights (launched 2011). Google generates most of its revenues from advertising. This includes sales of apps, purchases made in-app, digital content products on Google and YouTube, Android and licensing and service fees, including fees received for Google Cloud offerings. Forty-six percent of this profit

868-1034: A third in December affecting the entire suite of Google applications. All three outages were resolved within hours. In 2021, the Alphabet Workers Union was founded, composed mostly of Google employees. In January 2021, the Australian Government proposed legislation that would require Google and Facebook to pay media companies for the right to use their content. In response, Google threatened to close off access to its search engine in Australia. In March 2021, Google reportedly paid $ 20 million for Ubisoft ports on Google Stadia. Google spent "tens of millions of dollars" on getting major publishers such as Ubisoft and Take-Two to bring some of their biggest games to Stadia. In April 2021, The Wall Street Journal reported that Google ran

930-458: A website. In 2017, the company celebrated its 60th anniversary. Frommer has maintained a travel-related blog on the company's website since 2007. In 1957, Arthur Frommer, then a corporal in the U.S. Army , wrote a travel guide for American GIs in Europe, and then produced a civilian version called Europe on $ 5 a Day . The book ranked popular landmarks and sights in order of importance and included suggestions on how to travel around Europe on

992-459: A years-long program called "Project Bernanke" that used data from past advertising bids to gain an advantage over competing for ad services. This was revealed in documents concerning the antitrust lawsuit filed by ten US states against Google in December. In September 2021, the Australian government announced plans to curb Google's capability to sell targeted ads, claiming that the company has

1054-432: Is home to several prominent Silicon Valley technology start-ups. The next year, Google began selling advertisements associated with search keywords against Page and Brin's initial opposition toward an advertising-funded search engine. To maintain an uncluttered page design, advertisements were solely text-based. In June 2000, it was announced that Google would become the default search engine provider for Yahoo! , one of

1116-576: Is what allowed them to open up their original shop in Menlo Park, California . Craig Silverstein , a fellow PhD student at Stanford, was hired as the first employee. After some additional, small investments through the end of 1998 to early 1999, a new $ 25 million round of funding was announced on June 7, 1999, with major investors including the venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital . Both firms were initially reticent about investing jointly in Google, as each wanted to retain

1178-466: Is wrong with Amazon 'ecotourism'". The hotel closed down in 2016. The hotel has 288 units split amongst apartments , suites (located in the towers) and tree houses . The tallest of the units, the Tarzan House, is built on top of a living mahogany tree, at the height of 22 m from the ground. The towers are interlinked by a wooden catwalk system of approximately 5 miles (8.0 km), all within

1240-526: The EU Court of Justice , based in Europe, would also find that Google held an illegal monopoly, in this case with regards to its shopping search, and could not avoid paying a €2.4 billion fine. The EU Court of Justice found that Google's treatment of rival shopping searches, which the court referred to as "discriminatory", was in violation of the Digital Markets Act . In October 2024, Google

1302-628: The Google Self-Driving Car Project ), smart cities ( Sidewalk Labs ), and transformer models ( Google DeepMind ). Google Search and YouTube are the two most-visited websites worldwide followed by Facebook and X (formerly known as Twitter). Google is also the largest search engine , mapping and navigation application , email provider , office suite , online video platform , photo and cloud storage provider, mobile operating system , web browser , machine learning framework, and AI virtual assistant provider in

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1364-790: The Meeting of the Waters , where the Rio Negro and the Solimoes River meet, but because of density and different temperatures don't get mixed. The separate shades of water run side by side for a length of more than four miles (6 km) without mixing. Macaws and various breeds of native and non-native monkeys are common around the towers. In 2015, the government seized the property and planned to sell it to pay off its debt, with an asking price of US$ 8.3 million. A news item in May 2017 stated that

1426-410: The exposé , "How Google Protected Andy Rubin , the 'Father of Android'". The company subsequently announced that "48 employees have been fired over the last two years" for sexual misconduct. On November 1, 2018, more than 20,000 Google employees and contractors staged a global walk-out to protest the company's handling of sexual harassment complaints. CEO Sundar Pichai was reported to be in support of

1488-602: The AI race, Google's senior management issued a "code red" and a "directive that all of its most important products—those with more than a billion users—must incorporate generative AI within months". In early May 2023, Google announced its plans to build two additional data centers in Ohio. These centers, which will be built in Columbus and Lancaster, will power up the company's tools, including AI technology. The said data hub will add to

1550-408: The Google content network, through a cost-per-click scheme. The sister service, Google AdSense, allows website owners to display these advertisements on their website and earn money every time ads are clicked. One of the criticisms of this program is the possibility of click fraud , which occurs when a person or automated script clicks on advertisements without being interested in the product, causing

1612-475: The advertiser to pay money to Google unduly. Industry reports in 2006 claimed that approximately 14 to 20 percent of clicks were fraudulent or invalid. Google Search Console (rebranded from Google Webmaster Tools in May 2015) allows webmasters to check the sitemap, crawl rate, and for security issues of their websites, as well as optimize their website's visibility. Google had previously used virtual assistants and chatbots , such as Google Bard, prior to

1674-466: The already operational center near Columbus, bringing Google's total investment in Ohio to over $ 2 billion. In August 2024, Google would lose a lawsuit which started in 2020 in lower court, as it was found that the company had an illegal monopoly over Internet search. D.C. Circuit Court Judge Amit Mehta held that this monopoly was in violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act . In September 2024,

1736-646: The beginning of the 2008 film Jumper . Complete references from the Frommer's Guide book for Traveling around the world can be seen in the movie Last Stop for Paul . Google Google LLC ( / ˈ ɡ uː ɡ əl / GOO -gəl ) is an American-based multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising , search engine technology, cloud computing , computer software , quantum computing , e-commerce , consumer electronics , and artificial intelligence (AI). It has been referred to as "the most powerful company in

1798-477: The canopy of the rainforest . Other facilities within these tree tops include 2 swimming pools, two observation towers 134 ft (41 m) high and a panoramic auditorium for 450 people. There are also restaurants serving regional foods, bars and convenience stores. The hotel had various tours available within the forest, such as canoe walk, jungle walk, piranha fishing, visit to native's houses, and observation of nightlife animals. Visitors could also observe

1860-497: The code to implement Page's ideas. Page and Brin would also use their friend Susan Wojcicki 's garage as their office when the search engine was set up in 1998. Page and Brin originally nicknamed the new search engine "BackRub", because the system checked backlinks to estimate the importance of a site. Hassan as well as Alan Steremberg were cited by Page and Brin as being critical to the development of Google. Rajeev Motwani and Terry Winograd later co-authored with Page and Brin

1922-466: The company Willow Garage in 2006. While conventional search engines ranked results by counting how many times the search terms appeared on the page, they theorized about a better system that analyzed the relationships among websites. They called this algorithm PageRank ; it determined a website's relevance by the number of pages, and the importance of those pages that linked back to the original site. Page told his ideas to Hassan, who began writing

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1984-455: The company was purchased for $ 400 million, yet the source of the information was not disclosed. A Google spokesperson declined to comment on the price. The purchase of DeepMind aids in Google's recent growth in the artificial intelligence and robotics community. In 2015, DeepMind's AlphaGo became the first computer program to defeat a top human pro at the game of Go. According to Interbrand's annual Best Global Brands report, Google has been

2046-533: The deal. The sale of $ 1.67 billion gave Google a market capitalization of more than $ 23 billion. On November 13, 2006, Google acquired YouTube for $ 1.65 billion in Google stock, On July 20, 2007, Google bids $ 4.6 billion for the wireless-spectrum auction by the FCC. On March 11, 2008, Google acquired DoubleClick for $ 3.1 billion, transferring to Google valuable relationships that DoubleClick had with Web publishers and advertising agencies. By 2011, Google

2108-419: The development of micro-optics, monolithic integration, and system integration. In December 2022, Google debuted OSV-Scanner, a Go tool for finding security holes in open source software , which pulls from the largest open source vulnerability database of its kind to defend against supply chain attacks. In early 2023, following the success of ChatGPT and concerns that Google was falling behind in

2170-451: The first paper about the project, describing PageRank and the initial prototype of the Google search engine, published in 1998. Héctor García-Molina and Jeffrey Ullman were also cited as contributors to the project. PageRank was influenced by a similar page-ranking and site-scoring algorithm earlier used for RankDex , developed by Robin Li in 1996, with Larry Page's PageRank patent including

2232-424: The following series: Frommer's guidebooks are represented in the 2004 comedy EuroTrip when one of the main characters, Jamie, uses it to guide a group of teenagers around Europe . Jamie later gets a job with Frommer's at the end of EuroTrip. In the opening scene of 2003's Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle , Cameron Diaz enters a Mongolian beer shack holding a Frommer's guidebook. A copy can also be seen near

2294-498: The forest and the river ... with all the advances would make this hotel again a unique hotel worldwide. 3°5′35″S 60°26′29″W  /  3.09306°S 60.44139°W  / -3.09306; -60.44139 Frommer%27s Frommer's ( / ˈ f r oʊ m ər z / ) is a travel guide book series created by Arthur Frommer in 1957. Frommer's has since expanded to include more than 350 guidebooks in 14 series, as well as other media including an eponymous radio show and

2356-476: The grounds the company had abused a monopoly position in the search and search advertising markets. In December 2019, former PayPal chief operating officer Bill Ready became Google's new commerce chief. Ready's role will not be directly involved with Google Pay . In April 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic , Google announced several cost-cutting measures. Such measures included slowing down hiring for

2418-678: The information they desire through the use of keywords and operators . According to comScore market research from November 2009, Google Search is the dominant search engine in the United States market, with a market share of 65.6%. In May 2017, Google enabled a new "Personal" tab in Google Search, letting users search for content in their Google accounts' various services, including email messages from Gmail and photos from Google Photos. Google launched its Google News service in 2002, an automated service which summarizes news articles from various websites. Google also hosts Google Books ,

2480-481: The launch of a new company, called Calico , on September 19, 2013, to be led by Apple Inc. chairman Arthur Levinson . In the official public statement, Page explained that the "health and well-being" company would focus on "the challenge of ageing and associated diseases". On January 26, 2014, Google announced it had agreed to acquire DeepMind Technologies , a privately held artificial intelligence company from London . Technology news website Recode reported that

2542-573: The most popular websites at the time, replacing Inktomi . In 2003, after outgrowing two other locations, the company leased an office complex from Silicon Graphics , at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway in Mountain View, California . The complex became known as the Googleplex , a play on the word googolplex , the number one followed by a googol of zeroes. Three years later, Google bought the property from SGI for $ 319 million. By that time,

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2604-722: The name "Google" had found its way into everyday language, causing the verb " google " to be added to the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary , denoted as: "to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet". The first use of the verb on television appeared in an October 2002 episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer . Additionally, in 2001 Google's investors felt

2666-538: The need to have a strong internal management, and they agreed to hire Eric Schmidt as the chairman and CEO of Google. Eric was proposed by John Doerr from Kleiner Perkins. He had been trying to find a CEO that Sergey and Larry would accept for several months, but they rejected several candidates because they wanted to retain control over the company. Michael Moritz from Sequoia Capital at one point even menaced requesting Google to immediately pay back Sequoia's $ 12.5m investment if they did not fulfill their promise to hire

2728-429: The new policy, Google may remove information from only certain but not all search queries. It would not remove content that is "broadly useful", such as news articles, or already part of the public record. In May 2022, Google announced that the company had acquired California based, MicroLED display technology development and manufacturing Start-up Raxium. Raxium is set to join Google's Devices and Services team to aid in

2790-522: The property would be sold by auction in September of that year with a suggested price of US$ 2.3 million, and a minimum bid of 2 million. A real estate listing in August 2019 indicated that the property was then for sale for €2.5 million. The description provided these specifics: The Ariaú closed the doors in 2016, despite the abandonment, the facilities still impress, with an architecture totally adapted to

2852-578: The protests. Later in 2019, some workers accused the company of retaliating against internal activists. On March 19, 2019, Google announced that it would enter the video game market, launching a cloud gaming platform called Google Stadia . On June 3, 2019, the United States Department of Justice reported that it would investigate Google for antitrust violations. This led to the filing of an antitrust lawsuit in October 2020, on

2914-467: The reference division of Simon & Schuster in 1998 and sold it to IDG Books in 1999. John Wiley & Sons acquired IDG Books (renamed Hungry Minds) in 2001. Arthur’s daughter, Pauline Frommer, was writing her own series of travel guidebooks and continuing the Frommer’s travel legacy. On August 13, 2012, it was announced that Google was acquiring Frommer's for an undisclosed sum. In March 2013, it

2976-609: The region's specific needs and training local talent. The partnership between Google and Saudi Arabia includes collaboration with key stakeholders, such as the Public Investment Fund (PIF), to develop AI applications that will benefit sectors like healthcare, finance, oil and gas, and logistics. The initiative focuses on creating localized AI technologies, with an emphasis on integrating Arabic language capabilities and enabling widespread cloud adoption. Google indexes billions of web pages to allow users to search for

3038-636: The remainder of 2020, except for a small number of strategic areas, recalibrating the focus and pace of investments in areas like data centers and machines, and non-business essential marketing and travel. Most employees were also working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the success of it even led to Google announcing that they would be permanently converting some of their jobs to work from home The 2020 Google services outages disrupted Google services: one in August that affected Google Drive among others, another in November affecting YouTube , and

3100-461: The search context and the user history. In 2007, Google launched " AdSense for Mobile ", taking advantage of the emerging mobile advertising market. Google Analytics allows website owners to track where and how people use their website, for example by examining click rates for all the links on a page. Google advertisements can be placed on third-party websites in a two-part program. Google Ads allows advertisers to display their advertisements in

3162-565: The second most valuable brand in the world (behind Apple Inc.) in 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016, with a valuation of $ 133 billion. On August 10, 2015, Google announced plans to reorganize its various interests as a conglomerate named Alphabet Inc. Google became Alphabet's largest subsidiary and the umbrella company for Alphabet's Internet interests. Upon completion of the restructuring, Sundar Pichai became CEO of Google, replacing Larry Page, who became CEO of Alphabet. On August 8, 2017, Google fired employee James Damore after he distributed

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3224-540: The world as measured by market share. On the list of most valuable brands, Google is ranked second by Forbes and fourth by Interbrand. It has received significant criticism involving issues such as privacy concerns , tax avoidance , censorship , search neutrality , antitrust and abuse of its monopoly position. On August 5, 2024, D.C. Circuit Court Judge Amit P. Mehta ruled that Google held an illegal monopoly over Internet search. Google began in January 1996 as

3286-759: The world" and is one of the world's most valuable brands due to its market dominance , data collection , and technological advantages in the field of AI. Google's parent company, Alphabet Inc. , is one of the five Big Tech companies, alongside Amazon , Apple , Meta , and Microsoft . Google was founded on September 4, 1998, by American computer scientists Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were PhD students at Stanford University in California . Together, they own about 14% of its publicly listed shares and control 56% of its stockholder voting power through super-voting stock . The company went public via an initial public offering (IPO) in 2004. In 2015, Google

3348-543: Was Shriram who told Bezos about Google. Bezos asked Shriram to meet Google's founders and they met six months after Shriram had made his investment when Bezos and his wife were on a vacation trip to the Bay Area. Google's initial funding round had already formally closed but Bezos' status as CEO of Amazon was enough to persuade Page and Brin to extend the round and accept his investment. Between these initial investors, friends, and family Google raised around $ 1,000,000, which

3410-569: Was fined by Russia with 2.5 decillion dollars for allegedly blocking pro-Kremlin propaganda. In November 2024, Google announced the establishment of a new artificial intelligence (AI) hub in Saudi Arabia, aiming to support the Kingdom's economic growth and technological development as part of its Vision 2030 initiative. This AI hub is projected to contribute up to $ 71 billion to Saudi Arabia's economy by advancing AI-driven solutions tailored to

3472-422: Was fired on the same day. Between 2018 and 2019, tensions between the company's leadership and its workers escalated as staff protested company decisions on internal sexual harassment, Dragonfly , a censored Chinese search engine, and Project Maven , a military drone artificial intelligence, which had been seen as areas of revenue growth for the company. On October 25, 2018, The New York Times published

3534-409: Was from clicks (cost per clicks), amounting to US$ 109,652 million in 2017. This includes three principal methods, namely AdMob , AdSense (such as AdSense for Content, AdSense for Search, etc.) and DoubleClick AdExchange. In addition to its own algorithms for understanding search requests, Google uses technology from its acquisition of DoubleClick , to project user interest and target advertising to

3596-489: Was handling approximately 3 billion searches per day. To handle this workload, Google built 11 data centers around the world with several thousand servers in each. These data centers allowed Google to handle the ever-changing workload more efficiently. In May 2011, the number of monthly unique visitors to Google surpassed one billion for the first time. In May 2012, Google acquired Motorola Mobility for $ 12.5 billion, in its largest acquisition to date. This purchase

3658-540: Was initially funded by an August 1998 investment of $ 100,000 from Andy Bechtolsheim , co-founder of Sun Microsystems . This initial investment served as a motivation to incorporate the company to be able to use the funds. Page and Brin initially approached David Cheriton for advice because he had a nearby office in Stanford, and they knew he had startup experience, having recently sold the company he co-founded, Granite Systems, to Cisco for $ 220 million. David arranged

3720-629: Was made in part to help Google gain Motorola's considerable patent portfolio on mobile phones and wireless technologies, to help protect Google in its ongoing patent disputes with other companies, mainly Apple and Microsoft , and to allow it to continue to freely offer Android. In June 2013, Google acquired Waze for $ 966 million. While Waze would remain an independent entity, its social features, such as its crowdsourced location platform, were reportedly valuable integrations between Waze and Google Maps , Google's own mapping service. Google announced

3782-459: Was reorganized as a wholly owned subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. Google is Alphabet's largest subsidiary and is a holding company for Alphabet's internet properties and interests. Sundar Pichai was appointed CEO of Google on October 24, 2015, replacing Larry Page, who became the CEO of Alphabet. On December 3, 2019, Pichai also became the CEO of Alphabet. The company has since rapidly grown to offer

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3844-434: Was reported that Google ended the printing of Frommer's guidebooks. In April 2013, it was announced that the Frommer's brand has been reacquired by Arthur Frommer and his daughter, Pauline Frommer. In July 2013, Arthur Frommer struck a deal with Publishers Group West to distribute and promote Frommer's books. More than 75 million copies of Frommer's guide books have been sold since 1957. Over 350 titles are available in

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