More on Yahoo Subscriptions mixing free and priced content

Michael Pastore, For Paid Content, the Times They Are a Changin', Intranet Journal, July 22, 2005. Excerpt:

The "deep Web" — online content that sits behind subscriptions and members-only barriers — and the not-so-deep Web (free Web content) collided with the launch of the Yahoo Subscriptions beta last month. The Yahoo service, which added LexisNexis and Factiva to its list of content aggregators and publishers this week, lets users search both the open Web and the deep Web in one search. And if you already have a subscription to Yahoo Subscription's publishing partners, you get to use the Yahoo search technology to search multiple publishers and aggregators as well as the open Web. The approach isn't entirely new; Northern Light gave it a try until 2002. But it's an approach that Internet users should probably get used to. When International Data Group (IDG) CEO Pat Kenealy told Wired this week he thought the Internet of 2005 reminded him of television in 1955, when the content was all free, it was a comment that got your attention. Kenealy's company, after all, publishes some 300 Web sites and magazines in the technology space. On Wall Street, newspaper stocks are performing poorly. The latest numbers from Dow Jones and The New York Times Co. were less than stellar, with the exception of their online ventures. The Wall Street Journal Web site had an 8.8 percent increase in the number of subscribers in the second quarter of this year; and remember, you pay for the Journal online. Neither paid content or free content is going away anytime soon. The deep Web and the open Web will have to find a way to co-exist. That is, essentially, what the Yahoo Subscriptions beta is all about — finding a way to bring the paid and free content together for people searching the Internet. Is this what we should come to expect in the future?