LookSmart Partners With the Gale Group

Posted on May 24, 2000

LookSmart, a web directory, has announced an exclusive partnership with the Gale Group, a leader in research and reference publishing. The partnership will make business and premium magazine and periodical content, from a variety of publications ranging from Scientific American to Rolling Stone, available for free to users who search the LookSmart directory. Once the Gale collection is added to the LookSmart directory, users will be able to access business and magazine content for free by searching the Internet through any of LookSmart's 400 partner websites.

Under the terms of the agreement, Gale will provide LookSmart with access to current and archived articles from hundreds of magazines and journals. LookSmart will integrate the collection of articles into its directory and make it available to LookSmart's distribution partners.

``Partnering with Gale to liberate hundreds of thousands of proprietary articles and make them free for all Web users creates further unique advantages for partners to choose LookSmart as their search infrastructure supplier,'' said Evan Thornley, chairman and chief executive officer of LookSmart. ``The ability to distribute enriched magazine and periodical content to 52 million users in our distribution network and to monetize the valuable search traffic creates a large new pool of value to be shared with our partners and the owners of the original content. Business information is a multibillion-dollar market in the U.S. alone, and we are excited to bring a Web-native approach to disintermediating this industry. By adopting this approach to proprietary information, the traditional pay-per-play model is relegated to dinosaur status.''

``We're delighted to partner with LookSmart. We're very impressed with their dedication to editorial integrity and vast distribution network,'' said Allen Paschal, chief executive officer of the Gale Group. ``We feel that LookSmart is wonderfully equipped to present our content to users in a relevant fashion and on a dramatic scale.''

LookSmart and Gale will integrate the magazine and periodical content into the search results early this summer. Going forward, the offering will be enhanced with the addition of more titles, data sources and proprietary reference materials.