Dialog tried charging for connect time while the mainframe was processing, but found that the change in search costs now significantly lower on DialogWeb than on Dialog Classic due to the reduction in total connect time charges had too much of an impact on the bottom line. By introducing DialUnit pricing, Dialog hoped to recoup that revenue in an interface-neutral way. Presumably, the DialUnit cost, based on an undisclosed algorithm that calculated total system resources used to execute each command, would be revenue neutral and would even out the search costs between DialogWeb and Dialog Classic. As it turned out, searchers saw a significant increase in total search costs, regardless of their access method. My comparison of before and after costs of sample searches showed an increase of 20-50 percent.
Eternal vigilance is the price of an obedient dog or a well-behaved online vendor.
I repeated all my sample searches in September and found that the total search cost had, to my surprise, returned to the pre-DialUnit cost. While I think I shared the annoyance of many other long-time, devoted Dialog users with the shabby treatment we had gotten from the online vendor we had come to expect better from, I was pleased to see that Dialog had rectified its mistake and returned us to a new but reasonably predictable pricing scheme. However, recently I began noticing that my search costs had started inching up and I became suspicious. I am writing this article just days before The Phantom Menace, the newest of the Star Wars movies, is released. Already my local theatre has a line three blocks long in front of it of people who want front-row seats when the movie opens.