Microsoft announced Friday
that it would finish its attempt to create an online library of the world’s
books. The two projects Live Search Books and Live Search Academics have
already been cancelled, as Satya Nadella Microsoft, senior vice president of
search, announced on a company blog.
This announcement came as a big shock since Microsoft revealed Wednesday
a program that gave users who buy items on the internet the possibility to utilize
the company’s search engine.
However, search experts consider that the Microsoft search engine is by
far not as developed as the ones used by Google and Yahoo. The number of
queries performed each month was the contributing factor to their opinion. Becoming
aware of this fact made Microsoft abandon the projects.
Microsoft began the book-scanning business in 2005 when it joined the
Internet Archive, a nonprofit digital archive. This company also took the
information from some libraries where Google access was out of question, mainly
because Google placed restrictions on the use of the new digital files.
However, it seems that Microsoft has cut down the funding for the book-scanning
process. Now, the funding is being expected from the public, as Brewster Kahle,
chairman of the Internet Archive, affirmed.
With or without Microsoft help, libraries and the digital archive are
set to continue the projects.
After Microsoft assertions, 750,000 books have been digitized and 80
million journal articles have been indexed. This means less than Google, which
owns copies from more than a million books and plans to scan 15 million in the
next decade. However, the books scanned by Google can be freely accessed by the
public, without being accessed by other search engines.
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