Yahoo, AOL, and MSN all have taken steps to make more of the subscription-based world available to others.
Yahoo recently debuted its subscription search feature, which allows visitors to search through sites that are normally not available to search engines.
To access results from Consumer Reports, FT.com, Forrester Research, IEEE publications, New England Journal of Medicine, TheStreet.com, or the Wall Street Journal, a visitor must be a valid subscriber to retrieve the content found by Yahoo’s subscription search.
Yahoo plans to offer results from Lexis-Nexis, Factiva, and ACM in the future, along with others. Subscription search results when found as part of a standard Yahoo web search will appear at the top of the results page. Or, a user can go to the subscription search page to focus only on delving into subscription-based content.
MSN has also begun working with Consumer Reports. On its MSN Autos site, the provider will now incorporate Consumer Reports content with its vehicle snapshots. Information like ratings, road test results, wholesale price ranges, and recommendations of similarly priced cars.
“Our agreement with MSN Autos will allow more car buyers to have access to the leading source of unbiased auto information on the Web,” said John Sateja, vice president, Publishing, at Consumers Union.
The longtime leader in subscription-only content, America Online, has decided to throw open its doors and will make virtually all of its content available online. The move, designed to take advantage of the online advertising market, comes as the company seeks to replace the revenue lost by subscribers leaving the service.
AOL’s switch, which will offer visitors a choice of a customized home page with rich video content or standard picture and text, takes place on June 21.
David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.
