Divine, Yahoo Strike Content Deal

Just one day after buying nearly all of the assets of Northern Light Inc., Divine Inc. on Wednesday announced an agreement with Yahoo Inc. in which Divine will provide one of Northern Lights services to Yahoo and its customers.

Northern Light was a Cambridge, Mass., enterprise content integration provider, and Chicago-based Divine provides extended enterprise solutions.

The new Yahoo service will be entitled “Yahoo! Premium Document Search” and will draw directly from the Divine/Northern Light Special Collection of more than 70 million pages of content, some of which is not otherwise readily available on the Web, according to the companies. The service is available immediately on all Yahoo search results pages, and will be integrated into Yahoo finance and news pages as well.

As with searches at many newspaper Web sites, consumers using the search tools will be able to view free summaries, and then have the option of paying on an individual basis, or on a subscription basis, with $4.95 buying 50 documents per month. Included in the available content will be material from business, health, science and news magazines, trade journals, newspapers, medical publications, academic journals, reference reports and archived materials from 60 American and international newswires.

“As a leader in providing extended enterprise solutions, including the information-rich premium content offering that is part of this agreement, Divine helps our customers gain a competitive edge and make more money,” divine CEO Andrew Filipowski said in a prepared statement. “We also are committed to working with industry leaders such as Yahoo that businesses and institutions depend upon as part of their extended enterprise.”

Scott Gatz, Yahoos vice president of search and directory, said the deal fits in with Yahoos strategy of having a more focused relationship with its users, and of drawing revenue from one of its core assets, the online search.

“It offers that user—whether that user is in the enterprise, whether theyre in a small business, or whether theyre at home—really a more valuable and powerful online search experience,” Gatz said.

Gatz declined to comment on the specifics of any conversations that preceded the deal between Yahoo and Divine, but as far as turning around a deal so quickly to use a search service Divine did not own until Tuesday, Gatz said that “we in the Internet space are constantly in touch with everyone thats out there in the market, in either this particular market and the search market in general, and had relationships with folks at Northern Light, and obviously knew folks at Divine as well. Weve started down this path with Northern Light and are very pleased that theyve found a new home, but Ill just leave it at that.”

Financial details of the deal were not disclosed.