Closing the Cover on Microsoft Book Scanning

Chris_Keene writes "The Live Search blog announces that the Live.com Book and Academic Search are to close. Book search in particular has had quite a bit of coverage, and often seemed like a race with Google. The Live blog says 'we are winding down our digitization initiatives, including our library scanning and our in-copyright book programs. We recognize that this decision comes as disappointing news to our partners, the publishing and academic communities, and Live Search users [...] this past Wednesday we announced our strategy to focus on verticals with high commercial intent, such as travel, and offer users cash back on their purchases from our advertisers.'"

Comments

MS did book scanning?

[alen]

there was a recent article about how MS hired a new advertising guy to help them with branding. MS's online efforts are pretty good compared to Google, but completely disorganized and not marketed properly

Disappointing

[mistersooreams]

I R'ed the FA, but I can't work out whether this is the end of the service altogether, or whether the existing service will live on but without new books being added. Despite the jingoistic tone of the summary, the former would be bad news for everyone -- although Google's tools may be better, it's surely better to have more of this information readily available to everyone.

Either way, I think it's a disappointing climbdown for Microsoft, and surprising given how much money they've been willing to throw at previous projects that were never likely to turn a short-term profit (XBox). I'll be interested to see what the "more sustainable strategies" mentioned in the article turn out to be.

verticals with high commercial intent

[Frosty Piss]

...verticals with high commercial intent...The reason why M$ $earch will never be competitive with Google.

Didn't even know about this!

[jimmyhat3939]

I guess it's a sign of the times, but this is literally the first I've ever heard of this initiative. I ran across Google Books pretty quickly because it comes up in searches. As a very infrequent live.com search user, I never had a chance to encounter whatever content they had digitized. Oh well.

Am I the only one

[Anonymous Coward]

..that thinks Live academic search is actually better than the Google one? The split-pane interface is much more intuitive, you get more detail for each result, you can get the bibtex entry by just mousing over a tabbar, etc.

Minor correction

[geekoid]

" this past Wednesday we announced our strategy to focus on verticals, such as shit Google doesn't do."

Re:MS makes no sense

[stephanruby]

I agree with you, many many times MS comes across as very schizophrenic.

With something like 75+ thousands employees (and double that number if you count their consultants, contractors, and joint ventures employees), I would expect MS to be a little bit schizophrenic, and I would be worried if they weren't. Next thing you'll say, it's that the slashdot crowd is schizophrenic as well.

Even on little things: how many times did they rename Vista, for example?

Especially on little things, managing all those little things instead of delegating those little things, that would be called Micro-Management. Not every company can be an Apple.

And how about them getting into, then out of, then back into, then back out of, then etc etc the peripheral hardware market?

You mean by asking hardware manufacturers to pay them money to put their logos on their peripheral products and use their distribution channel. I wouldn't call that getting in or getting out. I'd just call that selling your brand to the highest bidder, whoever might be the current highest bidder of the day.