Northern Light To Stop Free Publicly Available Search Service

[Richard Wiggins]

On Wed, 09 January 2002, Dan Lester wrote:
 
> I rarely disagree with Rich, but....
...

You are wise beyond your years. :-)
 
> RW> -- There should be huge banner ads and red flags on the
> RW> northernlight.com site right now emphasizing this news.
> 
> Why should there be.  A business might have a "going out of business
> sale", but since NL doesn't have anything to sell, that seems kind of
> pointless.
 
> Well, when you're getting it free, are you a customer?   

Yes, we most certainly are customers.  It was a banner ad supported service, and/or a "free" service offered as a tease to get people to buy from the Special Collection.  Maybe they didn't make much money on the free service, but a service marketed to people with no charge to end users is still a service.

I really can't believe you accept that it is just fine for NL to offer this service for years, advertise it, talk about it at library conferences, tout it in press releases, and then shut it down with no notice on the most obvious place to warn users: the portal itself.


/rich


Richard Wiggins
Writing, Speaking, and Consulting on Internet Topics
rich at richardwiggins.com       www.richardwiggins.com