Yahoo! Launches Premium Search

Only a day after incubator-turned-software-specialist divine Inc.
acquired content and search technology firm Northern Light and its
Special Collection, Yahoo! Inc. 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 its efforts to supplement ad revenues with new
and different 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.