Short answers, pulled from the story.
HighBeam Research was a paid search engine and full-text online archive that provided access to thousands of newspapers, magazines, academic journals, newswires, trade magazines, and encyclopedias in English. It was owned by Gale, a subsidiary of Cengage, and was headquartered in Chicago, Illinois.
HighBeam Research was founded by Patrick Spain, who had previously co-founded Hoover's. Spain established the company in August 2002 under the name Alacritude, LLC, after purchasing eLibrary and Encyclopedia.com from Tucows. The company was renamed HighBeam Research in 2004.
HighBeam Research shut down in late 2018 after sixteen years of operation. When it closed, all of its content was transferred to Questia, another online library service.
HighBeam Research's archive grew from 1,200 newspaper, magazine, and radio and TV transcript sources at its founding in 2002 to articles from 2,600 publishers by 2003, and reached 3,500 publishers by 2005.
HighBeam Research was purchased by Gale in 2008. Gale is a subsidiary of Cengage, the educational publisher, which became the corporate parent of HighBeam for the remainder of its operation.
In 2006, HighBeam Research added the archives of Oxford University Press, Knight Ridder, and The Washington Post to its platform.