By
David Rothman
The e-book world will be worse off in the wake of
Microsoft’s decision to end
Live Search Books and the related
Live Search Academic, a journal searcher. Microsoft felt such activities lacked the commercial potential of other search fodder such as travel deals. I think that’s a mistake. Google obviously disagrees with Microsoft’s business analysts.
At any rate, the killing of those "Live" services means less competition for Google and Amazon—and fewer choices for consumers and cash-strapped libraries. And what about about Microsoft’s allies at the
Open Content Alliance? I’d welcome thoughts from affected people.
Granted, I have reservations about too much of the book world going on the Web
without alternatives available. I feel safer with my favorite e-book files stored locally under my control. But Live Search Books did in fact offer downloadable PDFs of public domain works, at least, and much more could have happened, ideally with Microsoft recognizing the
ePub standard. This was no small archive, with 750,000 books digitized and 80 million journal articles indexed; and the end of the project is one more sign that it would be folly to expect the private sector
alone to guard our cultural heritage, even though it isn’t as if all the files will vanish.
TeleRead, anyone (with fair compensation for writers and publishers)?
The networked book angle
With
networked books coming—how long it will take I don’t know, though
Wikipedia is one example of the possibilities—Microsoft could lose in the long term. Live Search Books was a step in that direction, whether or not Microsoft or the publishers saw it that way. Elaborate links could have happened between books online.
Now the book world will be more than ever at the mercy of Google and Amazon unless it can come up with its own solutions via
BookStore and the like and think ahead to the networked book era.
Check out the recent
writings of Macmillan’s Sara Lloyd—well timed, given the news from Microsoft (keeping in mind that Macmillan is behind BookStore).
"Whatever shape the future holds," she
says, "it looks like publishers won’t survive unless they regain some of the roles that over the years have been handed off to other partners in the distribution chain." Exactly. Microsoft search engines will be crawling the libraries of publisher partners and libraries; let’s hope the pickings will be good.
One idea
So what will Microsoft do in place of Live Search Books and Live Search Academic? Well, I
have a few ideas—notably working with governments and publishers in developing countries to improve literacy and, gasp, even create new markets for books.
Meanwhile remember that Microsoft’s Live Search Books legacy will live on. "We are encouraging libraries to build on the platform we developed with Kirtas, the Internet Archive, CCS, and others to create digital archives available to library users and search engines."
Disclosure, made before: I own a very tiny speck of Google.
Related: Techmeme and
Google News roundups. Also see copy of Microsoft blog post below.
////////////////////////////////////
Friday, May 23, 2008 7:45 AM by
livesearch Book search winding down
Today we informed our partners that we are ending the Live Search Books and Live Search Academic projects and that both sites will be taken down next week. Books and scholarly publications will continue to be integrated into our Search results, but not through separate indexes.
This also means that we are winding down our digitization initiatives, including our library scanning and our in-copyright book programs. We recognize that this decision comes as disappointing news to our partners, the publishing and academic communities, and Live Search users.
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 the search engine, consumer, and content partner. 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. With Live Search Books and Live Search Academic, we digitized 750,000 books and indexed 80 million journal articles. 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. With our investments, the technology to create these repositories is now available at lower costs for those with the commercial interest or public mandate to digitize book content. We will continue to track the evolution of the industry and evaluate future opportunities.
As we wind down Live Search Books, we are reaching out to participating publishers and libraries. We are encouraging libraries to build on the platform we developed with Kirtas, the Internet Archive, CCS, and others to create digital archives available to library users and search engines.
In partnership with Ingram Digital Group, we are also reaching out to participating publishers with information about new marketing and sales opportunities designed to help them derive ongoing benefits from their participation in the Live Search Books Publisher Program.
We have learned a tremendous amount from our experience and believe this decision, while a hard one, can serve as a catalyst for more sustainable strategies. To that end, we intend to provide publishers with digital copies of their scanned books. We are also removing our contractual restrictions placed on the digitized library content and making the scanning equipment available to our digitization partners and libraries to continue digitization programs. We hope that our investments will help increase the discoverability of all the valuable content that resides in the world of books and scholarly publications.
Satya Nadella
Senior vice president search, portal and advertising
Digg us! Slashdot us! Share the news.
The e-book world will be worse off in the wake of Microsoft’s decision to end Live Search Books and the related Live Search Academic, a journal searcher. Microsoft felt such activities lacked the commercial potential of other search fodder such as travel deals. I think that’s a mistake. Google obviously disagrees with Microsoft’s business analysts.
May 23rd, 2008 at 3:04 pm
Has anyone here at teleread used either service? I can count on one hand — without using all my fingers there (and yes, I only have 5!) — the number of times I’ve used Google’s book search.
May 23rd, 2008 at 8:07 pm
Would I be totally crazy if I viewed this as a positive thing?
It seems to me that MS has been quite busy destroying other improvements in our information environment lately, and one less cookie pot for their grubby hands sounds like a very good development to me. After all this OOXML garbage — with their blatant bribery and bullying of standards bodies — and MS’s recent efforts to destroy OLPC, one can only imagine how much more damage they would do if they could find a way to control the ebook world for their coffers.
At Microsoft, Freedom is the enemy, so when the Big Bad Wolf goes to another neighborhood, I think it has to be good for all of us (except, of course, the people in the target neighborhood).
As for competition, that should come from us: Everybody who is working toward better solutions for ebooks. We should come up with better solutions. We may not have Microsoft’s money, but we (the citizens of the internet) have more people with more free time than all their employees combined. This is an opportunity to create something good while Big Brother Bill is otherwise engaged.
May 23rd, 2008 at 11:42 pm
LuYu, we need all kinds of competitors—large and small. How many people have Microsoft’s resources?
The other thing is that the existence of commercial products keeps open source people more alert as to users’ needs.
Even then, free/open source folks might fail. A prime example is the XO-1’s reading app—oh, how the built-in reader sucks!
One open alternative, FBReader, is great but it has a way to go and even now is not Sugarized.
So my position remains: I want both models, free/open and commercial, to flourish—with tech standards, vigorous anti-trust enforcement and other tools used to keep Microsoft from taking over the cosmos.
I’d also love to see massive foundation support of open source software, just so the money comes with strings: namely a requirement that coders be responsive to users.
Here’s to the mixed approach! Diversity is good in both biology and software dev!
Thanks,
David
May 24th, 2008 at 12:03 am
I’ve been downloading and backing up loads of the public domain books that have been digitalised, if I think I will want to read it in the future. We can trust neither Governments or Private Enterprise to back these initiatives for ever and private persons who run similar things in their spare time just get tired… If I could I’d back up the whole Internet archive, I do have the latest Gutenberg DVD. Ebooks give me the chance to pursue my studies and interests from home. And that is precious to me. I’m grateful for what MS have done but we needed more…
May 24th, 2008 at 9:07 am
[...] news has caused a stir in the e-book world, with some bloggers like David Rothman describing the move as a blow to the [...]
May 26th, 2008 at 2:05 am
David Rothman said:
Just to be clear, I totally agree with this in principle. However, I am talking about Microsoft, not all proprietary software vendors. While businesses do different things to protect their commercial interests, Microsoft has a long and distinguished track record of wicked business practices. They also have a history of being hostile towards choice in the market and Freedom in general. Diversity is good. Microsoft, specifically, is bad, and their money is dirty.