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May 23, 2008, 05:47 PM ET
Microsoft Shuts Book-Digitizing Project
Microsoft announced today that it would shut down its Live Search Books and Live Search Academic programs, which have digitized 750,000 books and indexed 80 million journal articles.
The scanned materials could be searched through Live Search Books and Live Search Academic, sites that will be taken down next week. The materials will still be available through the main Live Search site, but no additional books will be digitized.
In a letter to publishing partners and in a blog post, Microsoft said it was abandoning Live Search Academic and Live Search Books “to focus on verticals with high commercial intent, such as travel.” Microsoft has also recently announced a bigger change in its search-business model — a cash-back program that will pay users to search for products through Live Search.
Microsoft’s book-digitizing program was begun in a beta version in 2006 with great fanfare — and with many comparisons to Google’s more comprehensive (and controversial) Google Book Search, which scans thousands of books per day through its library partners and has attracted a major lawsuit over alleged copyright infringement. Microsoft digitized only books that were already in the public domain or for which it had explicit permission from copyright owners.
Microsoft will provide publishers with digital copies of their scanned books. —Catherine Rampell
Categories: Libraries, Company-Watch
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