Microsoft Book Search
December 6th, 2006 by Hugh
Here’s the biggest piece of news for a while on the printed word / digital convergence theme: Microsoft is to launch its ‘search inside books’ service this Thursday, in beta. The BBC reports that the digital archive will include out-of-copyright texts from the British Library, The University of California, and the University of Toronto. Later, Microsoft intends to integrate the service into its main search engine. Naturally developments like this greatly help Exbiblio, which wants to link printed texts to their digital equivalents.
Posted in All, Future of Paper | 4 Comments » | Other posts by Hugh
December 6th, 2006 at 8:55 am
Hugh,
It is nice to read you again.
December 6th, 2006 at 9:23 am
Thanks Francisco, I think will be lightly blogging in December, and probably bowing out at the end of the year. But it’s been great to receive your comments which have been enormously helpful.
December 21st, 2006 at 4:39 pm
*shakes head*
Seriously, how does this help Microsoft? This is just yet another attempt at Microsoft trying to stick its greedy hands into everyone’s pockets, whether they need to be there or not. I can understand if someone like Google or Amazon does this, but Microsoft doesn’t need to be wasting its money and time on its billion-and-one different ventures, and instead narrow its focus on its core software.
December 21st, 2006 at 4:52 pm
I think Microsoft is having trouble maintaining its Divide and Copy strategy it has so well honed. The internet biggies (Google et al) are leaps and bounds ahead of them (Live Search vs. Google, this vs. Google Book Search) that even when Microsoft seems to be getting back on track of late (competition-wise) they just get immediately trumped again.
I would agree that Microsoft concentrating on its core software business would be a good thing — for everyone.