Microsoft Releases Book Search

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft is releasing its Live Search Books, a rival to Google's Book Search, in test, or beta, version in the US. The digital archive will include books from the collections of the British Library, the University of California and the University of Toronto. Books from three other institutions will be added in January 2007. All the books currently included in the project will be non-copyrighted but later it will also add copyrighted work that publishers have given permission to include in the project."

Comments

Their beta things in a new area usually suck.

[eat bugs]

Look at their Microsoft Office Live Basics. It is much worse than many small free open source packages. They depend on they can give every thing free (for a short time): domain names, hostings, etc. I initially wanted to use it for www.mathpotd.org (Math Problem of the Day) and I found I couldn't do anything with it. Now you see www.mathpotd.com is being redirected to www.mathpotd.org -- even the redirection cannot be done nicely -- very ugly.

Re:Oh, for Pete's Sake

[Reality Master 101]

Please Microsoft, do something new that's not copying Apple and Google.

Wait, Google isn't based on copying something someone else was doing? (Alta Vista, HotBot, etc, etc).

Wait, Apple isn't based on copying something someone else was doing? (Xerox GUI, MP3 players, plus numerous other examples).

Both those companies invent almost nothing. You can argue that do better versions of what came before, but as far as basic inventions, no. If Microsoft (or Amazon, or AOL, or...) can do book scanning better, then let them. What's the big deal?

Oh wait, this is Microsoft we're talking about. They're not allowed to try different things.