A day after incubator-turned-software-specialist divine acquired content and search technology firm Northern Light and its Special Collection, Yahoo!
signed a deal with divine to offer a premium online research library.
The key word for Yahoo! of course, is “premium” as the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based portal continues efforts to supplement ad revenues with new sources of income by launching Yahoo! Premium Document Search.
Visitors to the premium search site will have access to the divine Special Collection, an online research library of more than 70 million pages of full-text content from more than 7,100 sources. Yahoo! said prices for most documents would range from $1 to $4, or consumers can pay for a subscription and get access to up to 50 documents for $4.95 per month.
Yahoo! said its offering includes a free document summary before purchase and a money back guarantee. In addition, consumers can purchase reference reports and access archived news from more than 60 U.S. and international newswires.
The launch is made possible by the divine acquisition, of course, a deal in which the centerpiece is Northern Light’s Special Collection, an online library of 7,100 sources, including Forbes, Business Week, American Banker, Economist, New York Times, Investext database of equity analyst reports and trade publications.
Financial terms of the all-stock purchase were not disclosed, nor were details of the monetary arrangement between Yahoo! and Chicago-based divine.
“This deal with divine enables Yahoo! to provide consumers with a more valuable, and powerful online search experience, where they can find the information that matters most to them,” said Scott Gatz, vice president, search and directory at Yahoo!.
The sale of privately held Northern Light comes less than a month after the Cambridge, Mass.-based company said it would discontinue its free Web searches to the masses, focusing instead on large companies and government organizations.
Editor’s note: Cox writes for Internet News, an internet.com site.
