Britannica.com to Launch Premium Service

Posted on July 20, 2001

Britannica.com Inc. announced plans to introduce a premium subscription service on its redesigned reference website: britannica.com. Beginning in the next few days, the company said, customers will be required to pay five dollars a month or $50 a year for access to the full text of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which has been available free since the site launched in October 1999. With this move, the full Britannica will no longer be available free anywhere. Under its new multi-tiered online strategy, Britannica's Internet products in the consumer, education and professional markets will be further differentiated, content and features being tailored specifically to the needs of each.

On the Britannica.com site, the encyclopedia will form the basis of a new paid premium service. Later in the year other databases, such as video clips and an encyclopedia for students in grades five through nine, will be added to the premium service. The new version of the site being released this month will also provide additional ways for users to navigate the information in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, such as topical browsing and a map browser. The subscription service will be free of banner and pop-up advertising.

``The Encyclopaedia Britannica is an unparalleled reference work, and it's revised constantly by some of the best editors in the world,'' said Ilan Yeshua, chief executive officer of Britannica.com Inc. ``In the past year alone we have revised more than 4,000 articles and added more than 500 new ones online. We are investing heavily in the content of the encyclopedia to stay on the cutting edge of knowledge and scholarship-revising articles, commissioning new ones, and making sure the Britannica is always fresh, engaging and up to date. We're going to provide a real value-added service, a place where people can find reference content of the highest quality from a range of sources, and we're going to develop tools to make the information you need easier than ever to find.''

The Britannica.com site will continue to offer some free resources. When fees for the full encyclopedia take effect, the opening paragraphs of all encyclopedia articles will be made available free, giving non-subscribers access to introductions, overviews and basic facts. Features that will continue to be free include Britannica's Internet Guide, a directory of websites selected and reviewed by Britannica.com's editors; an archive of recent news articles; and selected articles from top magazines. Other information sources, such as a new online encyclopedia for looking up quick facts, will become part of the free service later in the year.

Britannica.com will continue to sell site licenses for its Britannica Online reference service to educational institutions and subscriptions for BritannicaSchool, an integrated suite of teaching and learning tools, to schools in grades K-12. Additional CD-ROM and DVD products are also planned. Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. will publish a revised printing of the 32-volume Encyclopaedia Britannica this fall and introduce new printed products in the near future.