Microsoft Releases Book Search

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft is releasing its Live Search Books, a rival to Google's Book Search, in test, or beta, version in the US. The digital archive will include books from the collections of the British Library, the University of California and the University of Toronto. Books from three other institutions will be added in January 2007. All the books currently included in the project will be non-copyrighted but later it will also add copyrighted work that publishers have given permission to include in the project."

Re:Wasn't this expected?

[El Lobo]

And you mean that Linux (an Unix CLONE!!!!!) is better in originality? For crying out loud :-)

Duplication of Effort

[Nom du Keyboard]

What a wasted duplication of effort. I'd rather have both companies get together and make one good product for all of us to use at either half the cost, or twice the breadth and quality.

Oh, for Pete's Sake

[bill_mcgonigle]

Please Microsoft, do something new that's not copying Apple and Google.

Let's all now go look at Google Labs and predict the next 12 Microsoft products....

Re:Duplication of Effort

[silentounce]

If both companies got together [wikipedia.org] then prices most likely wouldn't be less and the quality wouldn't be near as great. Keep it the way [wikipedia.org] it is.

Re:The thinnest of books

[archen]

Lack of innovation jokes aside, what does this buy Microsoft exactly? I can understand Google's craziness due to their goal of indexing the world's information - and as such Google also tends to have many projects that don't yield profitable results. But Microsoft? This is a software company first. Maybe a search engine company in a way. Yet I don't see how indexing books gains them ANYTHING, aside from just doing what Google is doing... because it's doing it. Much like a little little kid who emulates his father hammering things to "fix" them, but not understanding the purpose of the hammering, nor doing it in a manner that actually fixes anything.

Re:Duplication of Effort

[Stinky Fartface]

Nonsense. Competition is good for the industry. While Microsoft are hardly known for being innovators, they have proven an ability to evolve an established idea. Google's book search will become better because of the competition Microsoft poses.

Re:Wasn't this expected?

[Kopl]

If you want to show anger towards linux, I recommend choosing a different path than complaining about it being built to standards like Posix and SUS.