How not to search for books online…

According to a article in the online version of the New York Times, Microsoft will be ending it’s efforts to provide a book-based search engine. Unable to compete with Google, Microsoft stated on Friday that they will be “ending a project to scan millions of books and scholarly articles and make them available on the Web.” The project so far, according the article, has digitized over 700,000 books and indexed roughly 80 million journal articles.  

The decision to end this project was based on the following:

‘“Given the evolution of the Web and our strategy, we believe the next generation of search is about the development of an underlying, sustainable business model for the search engine, consumer and content partner,” Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s senior vice president for search, portal and advertising, wrote on the blog.”

This statement may throw people off since Google continues to maintain and improve its book search engine. In fact, Adam smith (product management director at Google) stated that, “[we] are extremely committed to Google Book Search, Google Scholar and other initiatives to bring more content online.” As you may know from reading a previous entry , all of Editorial Campan’s titles are searchable and to some extent viewable though the book search program. So it looks as though users who once used Microsoft’s program will click to Google in order to continue their book searches. Is this a smart move on behalf of Microsoft? According to one individual, although this program was used on a small scale, it was still used, especially by libriarians.

“Mr. Sullivan said that the number of people using book search services from Microsoft and Google was relatively small, but it included librarians, researchers and other so-called early adopters who often influence others. These users are now likely to turn to Google with increasing frequency, he said.”

 Microsoft will slowly faze out their book search engine. Eventually funding for this project will have to come from else where. Is this proof that Google will forever be known as the ultimate search engine and how will this affect how people search for books?