A primary publisher's work was picked up by a secondary database publisher. This aggregated database was offered for sale through a tertiary company known as an online host or search service. Today's mechanisms are considerably more complicated with everybody playing multiple roles. A primary publisher may distribute directly on its own Web site, license material to a secondary publisher, license directly to the third-party distributor or to an enterprise customer, or some combination of these avenues. Secondary publishers and third-party distributors, in turn, scramble for new audiences, leading to a highly confusing situation with overlapping access possibilities.
New players reinvent the marketplace by creating alternative information sources.
What was once a string laid out in a straight line has become a tangled mass of knots and loose ends. Today's Internet exists for myriad reasons. Of course you can use it for research, but if you think every individual sitting in front of a screen at Internet-enabled computers in libraries are engaged in research, I think you should take a closer look. That depends on the question. If it's a phone number, probably yes.