Microsoft Pulls Plug on Live Search Books  

By Jim Milliot -- Publishers Weekly, 5/23/2008 8:53:00 AM

In an early morning post, Microsoft announced that it is ending Live Search Books and Live Search Academic projects and taking down both sites. Through the programs, Microsoft has digitized 750,000 books and indexed 80 million journal articles. Those results will now be integrated into general search results. Effective immediately, Microsoft has stopped digitizing new materials in both its library scanning and in-copyright book programs.

According to Microsoft, “based on our experience, we foresee that the best way for a search engine to make book content available will be by crawling content repositories created by book publishers and libraries.”

Microsoft will be providing publishers with digital copies of their scanned books, and is working with Ingram Digital, which was doing much of the scanning, to provide publishers with sales and marketing opportunities for titles already in Live Search Books.