Microsoft Releases Book Search 108
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."
Google did it a long time ago (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm waiting for google to buy a huge book publisher next, put the whole catalog up, and sell ads..
Playing tag with google ... (Score:3, Interesting)
I see some sort of strategy here - something very similar to what MSFT adopted against Apple, very succesfully - Building something that is cheaper, virtually the same - almost.
But the same rules may not apply in the world of online tools. Where GOOG is actually borrowing content to attract their actual product (i.e the users) whom them can then sell to customers (i,e advertisers) - Microsoft doesn't seem to have such a clear cut monetization plan from the looks of it. Seems to be more a case of dump enough money to smother the competitor approach, which I doubt will work with Google today.
I for one, would be more scared of Amazon and other publishers rather than such a half-hearted (peanut butter) effort by MSFT.
Re:Wasn't this expected? (Score:5, Interesting)
They never move into a market unless someone is already there.
It's the same mentality as long distance runners not taking the lead/avoiding it until the race is almost over. let the other runners have all the problems keeping ahead, then move in at the end.
It doesn't seem to be working against google though, interesting that.
And we'll see a 'Microsoft officially aproved' Linux real soon, called SUSE SP1.
More than so (Score:3, Interesting)