Yahoo Inc. on Monday started moving stock quotes directly from the nation's three largest stock exchanges on its own site, and launched a new financial data distribution service.

The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company said it had established direct relationships with the New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq and the American Stock Exchange.

The new deals enable Yahoo to eliminate the middleman in obtaining data from the three exchanges, and distribute the information itself for a fee, Craig Forman, vice president for information and finance at Yahoo, said. The company's new data-distribution service, called "Quotes from Yahoo Finance," includes stock quotes, charts and other financial tools.

While the majority of Yahoo Finance customers are expected to be media outlets, Yahoo hopes to expand to sites in other industries, such as banking, insurance and investment managers. Yahoo can tailor the distributed information for the licensee.

Besides additional revenue, the new distribution service is expected to expand the Yahoo Finance brand beyond its own site, while driving traffic back to Yahoo, Forman said. Information distributed by Yahoo will include links back to the site for historical stock prices, analyst estimates and other information.

Initial customers of Quotes From Yahoo Finance include Forbes.com, the site for Forbes magazine.