Northern Light ends free rides: "The shifts come as the Cambridge company tries to extract itself from the sluggish business of selling ads targeted at people who use its Web site for searches. "It accounted for a very large percentage of our server traffic and a very small percentage of our revenue," said David Seuss, Northern Light's chief executive. Northern Light will stop letting consumers use its Internet search engine for free come Jan. 16."

01/13/02 update: Northern Light powers Yahoo's Premium Document Search.