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

Sad.

[edlinfan]

Competition fights stagnation. I hope that Google doesn't sit back on its laurels and slow their improvements of Google Print/Google Books.

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

Re:MS did book scanning?

[simple english major]

And yet I had no idea that they were doing this. OTOH, my university library has a Google book search box on their front page.

Re:MS did book scanning?

[dgun]

Microsoft is doing a terrible job of copying Google, and normally they are so good at copying.

I'm an academic

[Ralph Spoilsport]

And I never found MS's academic search system that useful, so I am not affected by this directly. I *AM* disappointed that they gave up, though - the fewer players involved, the less competition, and the reduced competition will result in lower quality and slower performance and slower rates of getting books up on the web. Someone has to keep Google on its toes, and it sure isn't going to be Google.

RS

Re:I'm an academic

[salveque]

I'm not sure I'm disappointed... Microsoft has demonstrated its amazing ability to cause problems in everything they touch.

Re:I'm an academic

[AHuxley]

Muddying the waters is a good business strategy.
Its has worked well for MS over the years.

Re:I'm an academic

[abbamouse]

My thoughts exactly -- except that would add that one benefit of the MS initiative is that it used some different libraries, with different collections. Many older books are quite rare, and these are the ones I care about. I wish more libraries would work with Google. Actually I wish the LoC would scan every out-of-copyright work and offer them up at taxpayer expense on the web. After all, it's out intellectual and cultural heritage.

Re:I'm an academic

[Darby]

Lack of choices is never a good thing.

If it's a choice between a company with a history of quality and MicroSoft, then it's inevitably worse then only having the first to "choose" from.
MS is very good at sleazy market manipulation and little else. If they get into a market, then they will drag it down. That's the only tactic they know.

In any case, not so long ago people were saying the same things about Microsoft, and look how they turned out.

I don't know anybody who ever thought MS did a good job of anything. Paid for shills like Didio and the like were happy to pump them up, but they've been a joke among the technically adept since day one.
People were saying, "Don't do that or it will get hacked in minutes" for 30 years and they still haven't learned a damn thing.

Seriously, dude, pay attention once in a while.

Re:I'm an academic

[martin-boundary]

I wish more libraries would work with Google.

God I hope not. Google are very bad at sharing their scanning technology with the libraries. Generally they ask for a closed room and don't let even the librarians in. That's not the way to foster progress.

The fact is that libraries are the good guys in the fight to preserve information for the future generations, while the Googles and Microsofts are just corporate fly by night outfits in comparison.

It's not even that their scanning secrets are worth that much. Generally, the quality of Google's scans is not very good, and somebody will have to do it all again in the future anyway. They skimp on resolution, and don't clean the pages properly.

If you'd like to see scanning done right, take a look at Goettingen's Library. Their scans of historical math works are of a very high standard, the best I've seen around the web, certainly better than the Michigan, Cornell or Gallica offerings. Another project with the right humanitarian attitude is the Million Books Project, which is doing highly interesting work in the Chinese universities.

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.

Re:Disappointing

[explosivejared]

more sustainable strategies

Coming out with a new book service. Only this time it's bundled with the OS and a pain to remove. Also adding Google books to the list of apps that UAC applies to.

Oh man oh man

[colmore]

I can't believe that Microsoft are finally having their IBM moment.

I no longer care nearly as much as I used to, but goddamn if this isn't a blast to watch.

verticals with high commercial intent

[Frosty Piss]

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

Disappointing for Live Search users

[Anonymous Coward]

Both of them?

Re:Disappointing for Live Search users

[ady1]

Okay just to clarify, I believe that it is their official policy (leaned from friends who work there) to have their employees use live search first and only use alternate service (read: google) if they cannot find what they are looking for. They also are encouraged to provide feedback on what they couldn't find.

Standard Policy

[Drenaran]

Actually, this is right on track with Microsoft's established business practice. Start doing something that the public supports and that their customers desire, hype it up, achieve good will, and then give up half way in and drop all support for it (and if possible pretend it never existed).

Re:Standard Policy

[astrosmash]

The problem is that Microsoft has too much money. To a "normal" company, a venture such as this would require a significant investment, which in turn gives the company a big incentive to pull out all the stops to try and make it work. Succeed or die.

To Microsoft, on the other hand, a venture such as this require relatively little investment. If it works, it works; if it doesn't, oh well. Virtually everything Microsoft does outside of their Window and Office monopolies loses money.

These are the same tactics Microsoft has been using since the early 90s. They're just playing defence to whatever the competitor-of-the-day is doing, and they do it solely to protect the monopolies. The venture doesn't need to "successful" in the traditional sense, and it certainly doesn't have to make money, but if it's disruptive in some way to what their competitor is trying to do then it at least has some value for Microsoft, because at least Microsoft can afford to take a financial hit where their competitor usually can't. In the 90s you have Oracle vs. SQL Server, Netscape vs. IE. Now you have whatever-Google-does vs. MSN-Live.NET, iTunes vs. PlaysForSure. The difference is that at least back in the 90s Microsoft was actually capable of turning a disruptive stinker (say, SQLServer 6) into a real and competitive product; these days, not so much. But then again, Microsoft has a lot more money to throw around.

Re:Standard Policy

[Jekler]

After enough failed ventures, all those little failures start to add up. Someday it'll dawn on them they're in Bankruptcy/Reorganization mode. They can only dawdle so long before there's really nothing left for them to do but close the doors. It wasn't so long ago that nobody imagined IBM, SGI, or Sun Microsystems would ever have any trouble. The problem with having a big company is that you passively bleed out your resources faster than a small company would. It requires big successes just to maintain the current size. If they don't choose a direction soon, they're going to stop making any gains at all and shareholders will not be happy about it.

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.

Mistake in the quote

[Groo Wanderer]

"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"

Why is users in "Live Search Users" pleural? :)

          -Charlie

Re:Mistake in the quote

[cmacb]

Also remember Ballmer makes his kids use it.

I think Bill has switched to Google at home though.

Looks like that they finally realized

[ady1]

which the rest of the world already knew; that they cannot kill google by cloning their every product.

Re:Looks like that they finally realized

[gilgongo]

What is the difference between China and Microsoft? One is prolific in making faithful copies of everything that's sucessful, or even just interesting. The other is a nation with 5,000 years of history. They both have about the same R&D budget though.

Seriously - I wonder if this is the start of a real strategy shift for MS overall? One thing that's totally mystified me over the last few years is why they think that simply copying everything and anyone is a "stategy" at all. I mean, if I was working there I'd be utterly demoralised: the Zune, Silverlight, Book Search, Live.com... is there not ONE thing that MS does that is unique, or even remotely innovative? Where do all the R&D billions go?

Glad I finally heard about this

[horizontech10]

I thought I was keeping up with all the free public-domain projects, but somehow I missed this one. I've found one thing I've been looking for that's not on Google Books or Gutenberg (Norman bel Geddes's manifesto on Streamline Moderne, _Horizons_) and is hard to find in a library.

Gone, already?

[urcreepyneighbor]

Two quick queries - Ayn Rand and Science - yield no results.

It's always a shame when anything book-related goes away. :(

Re:Gone, already?

[frank_adrian314159]

Ayn Rand - yield no results.

Well, assuming you were searching for literature, they got that one right...

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.

Re:MS makes no sense

[hvm2hvm]

OK, so the reason for which Microsoft is disorganized is the fact that they have 75k employees. That doesn't mean it's the right answer. Knowing the cause of a problem doesn't solve the problem. It's clear that Microsoft needs a different approach instead of throwing money, developers and marketers at anything that doesn't work well enough.

Exactly why MS will lose

[MLCT]

Decisions like this don't surprise me, and they sum up why MS will lose.

Firstly, MS is starting to build a rather unattractive profile for themselves as "droppers". Any time they can't be bothered with something or some part of "the management" takes a decision then something gets culled. They did it with their DRM music that left thousands high and dry, and now they have done it with this. The folks at MS have to realise that nobody is going to want to deal with them if they keep it up. Because no matter what the gee whiz initiative or idea, everybody knows fine that if MS get frustrated with not having dominance with it, or gets bored and want to spend the money elsewhere, then they will drop it with a "screw you guys, I'm going home" attitude. Will they get as many vendors signing up to the "search cashback" program when they know (and we know) it will likely be scrapped in a year or two?

Secondly, it sums up MS in another way. They just don't get "it". They think of everything through some corporate eyes that requires dominance and control. Google scans books (and I am absolutely sure will continue to scan books) not because they want to "bury MS", but because they want to "organize the worlds knowledge". Criticisms of privacy et al. are all very valid, but part of a different argument strand. When it comes down to it Google scan books because they realise the importance of digitizing knowledge, and aside from the altruistic benefits of digitizing otherwise inaccessible paper - when it is digitised it can be searched, when it can be searched it can be monetized.

MS are stuck - and will always be stuck - in the 1990's. They treat all this as "the search wars" - they treat the whole thing as some second version of the browser wars. The only catch is that the tactics that won them that one won't work any more. The decision to end book scanning just reeks of the war mentality. They didn't scan and weren't scanning books to help the end user, they were doing it in an attempt to "bury Google". That is why they will lose - they are stuck in the past.

Re:MS makes no sense

[_ivy_ivy_]

It's clear that Microsoft needs a different approach instead of throwing money, developers, marketers, and chairs at anything that doesn't work well enough. Fixed it for ya.

Re:MS makes no sense

[emilper]

I think Microsoft just got enough text data to run whatever tests they need, and closed shop. Google will probably do the same as soon as they reach the point when more data will stop making a difference for their translation algorithms.

Neither Microsoft nor Google care about scanning books: all they need is raw text data, translated in as many languages as possible, for their automatic translation work. Proof? The quality of Google books scans is appalling , and none of the two actually implemented tools to let user use the books effectively. Google's MyLibrary is a joke useful only for boosting the vanity of books owners by letting them show off how endowed are their two selves stuffed with bound paper.