U.S. search engine company Northern Light Technology Monday received a major endorsement from wireless communications company Qualcomm. The two companies announced a tie-up, whereby users of a version of Qualcomm's Eudora e-mail service gain easy access to Northern Light's search engine.
In February of this year, Qualcomm announced that it would unite the two formerly separate versions of Eudora – the fully functioned retail release, Eudora Pro, and the free downloadable cut-down version, Eudora Lite – into Eudora 4.3, a single code base, with three user-selectable modes.
The deal with Northern Light applies to the sponsored version of Eudora 4.3, where users obtain the full Eudora program for free along with display advertising, according to a Qualcomm spokesman. This is the first time that Eudora has featured a sponsor for search capability, he added. To date, the company estimates it has about 1 million users for the sponsored mode version of Eudora.
Users of the Eudora 4.3 sponsored version can now click on a button in the e-mail program's toolbar, which will open their Web browser and directly link to a search page cobranded Eudora and Northern Light. The users can then query Northern Light's search engine from this search page.
Qualcomm uses the same technology to put the Northern Light button in the toolbar as it uses to serve up the display ads in the sponsored mode of Eudora, the Qualcomm spokesman said. The company began adding the button to Eudora late last week, he added.
Northern Light, based in Cambridge, Mass., is at www.northernlight.com. Qualcomm, in San Diego, is at www.qualcomm.com.
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