Microsoft Discontinues Live Search Program

Microsoft scanned in, digitized, and indexed 750,000 books and 80 million scholarly articles for its “Live Search” program which is similar to Google Booksearch. Microsoft decided to terminate the program and provide the digital copies of books scanned to the publishers. Microsoft will now rely on crawling the content repositories of other sites (I wonder if that includes Google Booksearch) in order to provide search results to those who might use its search portal.

Whether Microsoft discontinued this effort as a result of the resistance the traditional publishing houses are putting forth or whether it decided to cede this ground to Google, it is unclear.

Via CNET

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