I had become a little distressed when Northern Light transitioned to a quasi-Lexis-Nexis lite 2 years or so ago. It was like losing an old friendship over a really bad idea. On the PG web (pre-Google), Northern Light had been one of the best search engines around, with it's main competition being InfoSeek who got murdered via acquisition as well. Yeah, I know Yahoo! has been large forever, but it isn't truly a search engine, merely a directory, which is fine for some purposes. Altavista has always been a contender, but they can't quite get it right. Then there's HotBot, Lycos and other second tier engines, which are good supplements for search activities, but not overly impressive or able to compete with the almighty and indispensible Google. On a whim, I stopped by today for the first time in months and was greeted by this excellent news:
Northern Light, the tiny little search engine company in Cambridge, Massachusetts, emerged today from the chaos of the Divine bankruptcy, smaller but basically intact, its notable search, classification, and content integration technology still viable and ready to roll. C. David Seuss, former CEO of Northern Light, purchased the company in Divine's 26-hour marathon bankruptcy auction held three weeks ago, an event which has been referred to by the Chicago Sun-Times as "the social event of the season.” Seuss stated that he never expected to win the bidding for Northern Light, but had simply wanted to be present to witness what he thought would be the last rites for the "most elegant search technology ever to grace the land". Instead he left 26 hours later, sleep-deprived and unshaven, but pumped with adrenalin. Seuss observed, "Woody Allen said that showing up is 80%. Well, I showed up!"
Alright Seuss, hurry up and get the site back together! I loves my Google, but there's always room for a high quality engine like Northern Light.