Archive for the ‘microsoft’ Category
Microsoft to Discontinue Book Search
Microsoft has announced that it will be shutting down the Book Search section from Live Search in a course of some time in order to focus more on its core product. Live Search, which holds a meager 10.8% market share in the US, has been struggling to keep up with the unending growth of Google’s user base (61.6% US). Microsoft had joined hands with Internet Archive, a non profit digital archive, in 2005 to begin scanning books from various libraries after Google had announced similar plans. Microsoft had also managed to gain access of information from some libraries that had disagreed to co-operate with Google due to the project’s user restrictions.
Now that Microsoft has decided to close its project, Internet Archive will be forced to find alternative sources for funding. However, Brewster Kahle, chairman of the Internet Archive, affirmed that his company and the libraries plan to continue the scanning process by looking for funds from the public.
Microsoft says that until now it had managed to scan around 750,000 books and 80 million journal articles. It had deals with McGraw-Hill, Simon & Schuster and Yale University Press to include copyright works in its index. Google, on the other hand claims to have scanned over a million books and plans to scan more than 15 million over the decade. Google had faced its fair share of lawsuits from publishers over this course of time for scanning their literature without their permission. The company has been scanning books from libraries at Harvard University, Stanford University, the University of Michigan and the New York Public Library and has announced that it has no plans whatsoever in withholding this project.
