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The European Online Information Market
4/7/01



New research commissioned by Learned Information Europe shows that the European online information industry, worth around £928 million in 2000, is forecast to grow by about 4% both this year and in 2002.

The research for the report, "The European Online Information Market 2000" was carried out by business research consultancy IRN Services. The latter interviewed 56 information users in UK, France, Germany and Italy as well as selected information vendors.

Key factors impacting on the rate of growth include:


  • The transformation of aggregators into information solutions companies.
  • A rise in end user searching levels.
  • A continuing squeeze on the growth of information budgets.


The report confirms that the Thomson Group, Lexis-Nexis and Factiva are the three largest players in the European market. However, according to Katherine Allen, event director for Learned Information, " One of the surprises of the report is the fact that while we’ve all been aware of consolidation in the industry, no single player yet dominates the general online business information or scientific information markets."

The other key trend is the inexorable rise of free sites. Nearly 90% of respondents claimed to regularly use free websites, and nearly a quarter of those said they had reduced their use of paid-for services as a result.