Microsoft backtracks from book scanning business

28 May 2008

Microsoft Corp has backtracked from the business of scanning whole libraries and makes their contents searchable. This is believed to be a sign that Microsoft would fine tune its fight with Google Inc.

Microsoft has been under severe pressure from the market to prove that it has enough strength in the online business after the failed acquisition attempt on Yahoo Inc.

Now the company is planning to shelve off digitizing books and archiving academic journals in its search operation. The move will allow Microsoft to focus on other types of Internet searches, such as travel listings. But Microdoft Spokesman Scott Trepanier declined to say how much Microsoft had spent on the book project. Microsoft is making changes to its Internet business as it chooses battles with Google, owner of the dominant search engine. The company started making digital copies of out-of-print books in December 2006, later making deals with publishers to scan their books, after Google started a similar program with libraries. The Microsoft program has till now digitized 750,000 books and indexed 80 million journal articles.

According to Satya Nadella, senior vice president of Microsoft's search and advertising group, it will take down two separate sites for searching the contents of books and academic journals next week.

Live Search will now direct Web surfers looking for books to non-Microsoft sites. Company is planning to focus on verticals with high commercial intent.' In his blog Nadella wrote that company believes that next generation of search is about the development of an underlying, sustainable business model for the search engine, consumer and content partner.

It was in 2005 that Microsoft had entered the book-scanning business by contributing material to the Open Content Alliance. Microsoft's search engine is a distant third behind Google's and Yahoo's, in terms of the number of queries performed each month. Desperate to become number one leader in search engine business, Microsoft has given shape for many strategies to beat Google and Yahoo. It is said that company's ceding the book-search segment to Google and the Yahoo-led Open Content Alliance could signal Microsoft has a new search strategy and is ready to jettison its unsuccessful me-too efforts.