P R E S S     R E L E A S E

THOMSON PURCHASE OF DIALOG APPROVED

LONDON, ENGLAND AND CARY, N.C., FRIDAY 5th MAY, 2000: The $275m sale of The Dialog Corporation's Information Services Division to The Thomson Corporation was completed yesterday, 4th May following stockholder and bondholder approval on Thursday 27th April. The sale includes the world's largest commercial online information collection and the complete Dialog, DataStar and Profound product ranges. The Information Services Division will become a business unit of Thomson, and in doing so will retain the name of The Dialog Corporation. It will join Thomson's Scientific, Reference & Healthcare market group.

The entire Information Services Division, from senior management to support staff, is being transferred to Thomson. Products, personnel, and marketing, sales and support infrastructure will all remain in place.

The Dialog Corporation's existing U.S. headquarters in Cary, N.C., will become the world headquarters for all Dialog operations. The company will continue to maintain a regional headquarters for Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia in London.

From its beginning in 1972 as the world's first commercial online information provider, Dialog has been a leader in providing professional information services that deliver automated retrieval, sorting and delivery of reliable information, enabling customers to make better decisions and to perform their jobs more efficiently and effectively. Dialog has the world's largest commercial online information collection — more than 6 billion pages of text and 3 million images, all of which can be searched in seconds.

Dialog has over 20,000 customers in more than 100 countries, including established relationships with most of the Fortune 500 and Times 1000 companies. A single corporate customer may represent hundreds or thousands of end users.

With annual revenues of more than $5.8 billion, The Thomson Corporation is a leading, global e-information and solutions company in the business and professional marketplace. Thomson's common shares are listed on the Toronto (TSE:TOC) and London Stock Exchanges. The purchase of Dialog by Thomson is consistent with Thomson's continuing focus on its core global electronic information businesses.

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About Dialog
Dialog is the worldwide leader in providing online-based information services to organizations seeking competitive advantages in such fields as business, science, engineering, finance and law. Its products and services, such as Dialog®, Profound® and DataStar™, offer organizations the ability to precisely retrieve data from more than 800 million unique records, accessible via the Internet or through delivery to enterprise Intranets. For almost three decades, Dialog's brands have been known for their breadth and depth of content, precision searching and speed. The Winter Corporation recently recognized Dialog for its breadth and depth of content when they named the company the Grand Prize-winner in the Database Scalability Program 2000.

Headquartered in Cary, N.C., USA, with direct operations in 30 countries, Dialog products are used by more than 20,000 corporate customers in over 100 countries. Dialog is a subsidiary of The Thomson Corporation, a leading global e-information and solutions company in the business and professional marketplace with 2000 revenues of approximately $6 billion. The Corporation's common shares are listed on the Toronto (TSE:TOC) and London stock exchanges.

For more information about Dialog, call 1-800-3-DIALOG or visit www.dialog.com. For more information about Thomson, visit www.thomson.com.

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All designated trademarks used herein are the property of The Dialog Corporation or its subsidiaries. Registered marks are registered by The Dialog Corporation or its subsidiaries, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. All other marks are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

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