Microsoft To Shut Live Search Books

Oh I got the email, this after I sent them 3 copies of my book! The Google books program ain’t doing so well either, let me tell ya. Internet book promotion is so screwed up, didn’t Amazon have a deal with Facebook back in May of last year?!?!?

No one is going to miss this. But there is a lot of concern among publishers about Amazon. Microsoft proves time and again, you cannot throw money at problems.

I guess Microsoft is not able to generate enough revenue from this business… Nothing is going good with Microsoft these days.. no deal with Yahoo! yet…and this is another disappointing news they rolled out

I really cannot see the reason microsoft is slashing this initiative. It was a good area to compete with google and one of the rare occasions where Microsoft had the upper hand in PR. Microsoft is not exactly hurting for money, otherwise we would have seen a ceremonial slaughter of other money-wasting initiatives as well. The only explanation I can come up with is that they figured they had no way to compete with google in this area due to some unknown to us reason. Time will tell.

Seriously i haven even heard of it before! So well i’m not missing it, i guess most people won’t too.

I guess Google stands alone in the guest to ‘organize the world’s information’ and that is why Google will succeed, in the long term, with their business model.

The glass remains half empty - at least the publishers who participated get the output (or input as the case may be) of the effort for free…books and the Internet is a problem still not solved at all.

This is good news for hot new start up Atiz Innovation. They were the first to create a consumer book ripper and from what I’ve read, the college kids love it. Steven Levy of Newsweek wrote a great article about them. Pretty cool products atiz.com

For example, this past Wednesday, we announced our strategy to focus on verticals with high commercial intent, such as travel, and offer users cash back on their purchases from our advertisers.

I don’t know about you but I’m REALLY EXCITED ABOUT VERTICAL SEARCH. WOOOOO

What amazes me is that they couldn’t add even more search capability to the books they scanned in. There’s loads of potential info in there, it’s just a matter of indexing it or utilizing their search engine apis to mashup the content.

They could have also allowed in more eBooks, anything with full content. Asking for a live ID for simply getting access to read samples is another mistake.

This may have failed simply because the idea isn’t worth the money put into it, but also because after a point, they just didn’t have the imagination to make it work. Microsoft is full of people smarter than I am, though I’m rapidly finding that this is more in the engineering section vs. the business end. Just my opinion is all.

Even though Microsoft corporate has loads of cash, each team is given a budget and have to work within it. The problem, I think, for book search is that it had no defined end user scenario that it was trying to solve. It was hard to use, had limited number of books, and required me to sign-in to see anything. Ultimately, most users expect to find results within the core web results page, and do not think to click off on a “more” tab to find books or other search topics.

If I wanted to buy a book, I’d just go to Amazon. If I’m trying to find an answer to something, well, it might be in a book, but I get the Wikipedia link first, I’ll probably just go there.

All in all, this was a poorly defined effort by Microsoft, with little strategy and was started as a “me-too” effort in competing with Google.

Once again proving that copying Google is not the answer to creating a credible search offering.

Wow, is there anything Microsoft won’t fail to Google in?

Good move on Microsoft side.

This news once again proved that Microsoft is getting serious and focused in this search game. If I were Google’s shareholder, I’m going to feel a little more anxious.

I think that MS is shutting this down in hopes of opening it up again later, but with a paid subscription. Or maybe they want to enter the e-reader business to compete with Amazon, and giving this stuff away isn’t in their best interest.

I’m sort of basing this on “Given the evolution of the web and our strategy, we believe the next generation of search is about the development of an underlying, sustainable business model for search engines, consumers, and content partners.”

“It’s all about the Benjamins.”

Eventually, Yahoo and Google will shut down their operations also. It just didn’t made any sense from business standpoint.

How will this affect The Internet Archive? Microsoft was getting a lot of its books via Internet Archive scanning centers…

This is really too bad. I actually thought Live Search Books and Academic were quite great search verticals. They were quite simple to use, very streamlined, and did a great job (surprising this is MS, not Google).

Far better than Google Books and Scholar. LSB AND LSA actually offered more tools and overall a snap to use. Unlike MS, Google STOLE publishers’ content, and told them that they have opt-out if they didn’t want their works in Google’s hands.

Hopefully the Books and Academic search verticals might come out another time with more features or content, and most likely an adCenter ad somewhere just to get some money (LSB and LSA didn’t do ads). Or probably access to higher-level content for a subscription fee.

It might not be too long before Google has to throw the towel in as well.

I want all law books scanned, and in particular, all court decisions, opinions, etc.

So, Microsoft is saying it’s DUMB to expand the size of their search index by scanning books and scholarly articles, but SMART to pay people to use their search engine?

I think they’re wrong on both points.