As part of the agreement, the companies will also work toward integrating FT.com's content within Hoover's other sites in France (http://www.hoovers.com/fr), Germany (http://www.hoovers.com/de), Italy (http://www.hoovers.com/it), and Spain (http://www.hoovers.com/es) by the end of the year. Financial Times and Hoover's also agreed to assist each other with the promotion of their respective brands.

"This alliance will deliver practical benefits to businesspeople everywhere by providing easier access to both FT.com's wide-ranging, authoritative, and timely business news, and to Hoover's trusted company information on more than 65,000 public and private enterprises worldwide," said Hoover's CEO Patrick Spain. "By combining two of the best business brands on the Web, we're delivering the right combination of business news and information in a compelling, timely way."

"FT.com's leadership in delivering business and financial news throughout Europe complements Hoover's reputation as one of the best-known providers of company information online in the U.S.," said Stephen Hill, chief executive of the Financial Times Group.

A representative from Hoover's clarified that the information provided to FT.com would be Hoover's free Company Capsules, not the more in-depth information in its Company Profiles that's only available to subscribers. (Hoover's Company Profiles include an overview, company history, full lists of competitors and officers, and detailed financials.) Still, the Capsules contain a good amount of information, including company descriptions, contact information, key officers, competitors, and sales and employee figures. Of the 65,000 public and private companies included, 17,000 are covered by Hoover's Company Capsules, while the other companies have somewhat abbreviated information available.

In turn, users of Hoover's Online and Hoover's Online UK will be able to link to more than 3,000 related news articles per day from FT.com. The links to FT.com will be available to all of Hoover's users. Hoover's reports that it has 3 million regular users per quarter and 280,000 paying subscribers.

FT.com is the online operation of the Financial Times newspaper, published by Financial Times Information, Ltd., which is owned by Pearson, PLC. As of January, FT.com reported 1.7 million unique monthly visitors (an increase of 55 percent in 1 year) and 39 million monthly page views. Obviously, the companies are hoping that site traffic will increase for both of them. FT.com is a free site that relies on advertising revenue, so increasing page views is highly attractive. The site has not yet shown a profit.

In addition, the partnership increases FT.com's exposure in the U.S. market, and provides a valuable European expansion for Hoover's. For U.S. users, the easy linking to the high-quality coverage in FT.com should prove very useful.