May 25th, 2008
Microsoft to shut down book scanning operations
By JESSICA MINTZ – 1 day ago
SEATTLE (AP) — Microsoft Corp. is abandoning its effort to scan whole libraries and make their contents searchable, a sign it may be getting choosier about the fights it will pick with Google Inc.
The world’s largest software maker is under pressure to show it has a coherent strategy for turning around its unprofitable online business after its bid for Yahoo Inc., last valued at $47.5 billion, collapsed this month.
Digitizing books and archiving academic journals no longer fits with the company’s plan for its search operation, wrote Satya Nadella, senior vice president of Microsoft’s search and advertising group, in a blog post Friday.
Microsoft will take down two separate sites for searching the contents of books and academic journals next week, and Live Search will direct Web surfers looking for books to non-Microsoft sites, the company said.
Nadella said Microsoft will focus on “verticals with high commercial intent.”
“We believe the next generation of search is about the development of an underlying, sustainable business model for the search engine, consumer and content partner,” Nadella wrote.
At an advertising confab at Microsoft’s Redmond, Wash., headquarters this week, he demonstrated a new system that rewards customers with cash rebates for using Live Search to find and buy items on advertisers’ sites.
Microsoft entered the book-scanning business in 2005 by contributing material to the Open Content Alliance, an industry group conceived by the Internet Archive and Yahoo. In 2006, it unveiled its competing MSN book search site.
Unlike Google, whose decision to scan books still protected under copyright law has provoked multiple lawsuits, Microsoft stuck to scanning books with the permission of publishers or that were firmly in the public domain.
The company said it will give publishers digital copies of the 750,000 books and 80 million journal articles it has amassed.
Tags: books, live, search
13 Responses to “Microsoft to shut down book scanning operations”
I found a whole collection of Usbourne books at a Salvation Army a little more than a year ago. One of my favorite finds, ever.
Of course I have realized something they haven’t. And I have more ideas than this. I wrote a few cursory suggestions to them in a letter after the last shuttle breakup… and the staff asked me to submit a formal proposal. I’m not an engineer, so I didn’t follow up on it - but they are very fair minded people.Here’s a quote from Henry David Thoreau, which I adore: “No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true to-day may turn out to be falsehood to-morrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields. What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new. Old people did not know enough once, perchance, to fetch fresh fuel to keep the fire a-going; new people put a little dry wood under a pot, and are whirled round the globe with the speed of birds…”permalinkparentsnewman (1 child) [+]snewman 3 points 3 months ago [-]Wow, does that bring back memories. This used to be my favorite book!
They forgot to mention the internet.
Good to see pimps are represented.
I am having the weirdest deja vu today. I told my wife about this book from elementary school just this frigging morning. I haven’t seen this book in 28 years and it shows up on Reddit on the day I mention it to my wife.I’m going to go play the lottery.
We are robots!
Mul-ti-pass?
Special consultant Uri Geller.
You’re right. Blue jean standard may have been inspired by Natalie Wood’s attire in the 1955 movie Rebel Without A Cause but didn’t become common wear for students and artists until maybe ten years later, and even later for professionals.Maybe it’s about the same for tennies and T-shirts, too.
Speedsuit.
I had this book as a kid. This brings back a lot of fond memories.
I had this book as a kid and I loved it, I can’t really put my finger on why. Even then it was clear to me that a lot of it was totally preposterous. I guess it was that it had imagination if not accuracy. Actually the inaccuracies may have been part of the fun. critical thinking for kiddies.Wow, just having a look at it. Every single page is just so familiar to me.