The European Online Information Survey 1988

By the end of 1992 the countries of Europe will work as one market; this means that whatever barriers to trading exist now — legal, fiscal, linguistic or economic — should then be removed. By 1992 too, the European Commission DG X111 will establish a European internal information services market. The effects of this unification are not easily perceived, perhaps chiefly because it is difficult to view the current European information industry as a whole, spread as it is between large numbers of information vendors and information providers in a range of countries. The same databases are available from different vendors and comparison is made difficult by the various pricing structures and the variety of access routes, software facilities and contractual limitations which different hosts affect.