Microsoft stops scanning books
Microsoft has said that after one and a half years of work, it curtails the projects for scanning books and magazines. At the same time, a similar project from Google continues to go at full speed, so the conclusion here can be done only one: Microsoft simply could not stand the competition.
The news of freezing the Live Search Books and Live Search Academic services came a few days after Microsoft officially announced that it would focus on some specific areas of Internet search in which it can compete with Google. Obviously, full-text book search does not apply to such areas. It is unlikely that such a service can be easily monetized, especially since the cost of scanning is very high. In principle, this is a rather specific field of search, the number of users of which is limited to librarians, researchers, the most inquisitive students, and so on. However, experts emphasize that such people are among the “early adopters” and have a great influence on the total mass of users.
Both Google and Microsoft have been scanning old books and magazines that have already become national property by prescription. In addition, Google without permission scans copyrighted work and gives out search queries for small quotes from these books, which does not contradict the law on copyright and related rights, although it causes fury of book publishers.
Before the project was discontinued, Microsoft managed to scan and index 750,000 books and 80 million journal articles. Most of the work was done for Microsoft’s money by the nonprofit Internet Archive (by the way, some libraries preferred to deal with this organization rather than with Google, because of the limitations that Google imposes on digital files). Now the Internet Archive has to look for a new sponsor to continue scanning 1000 books a day.
')
Google collaborates with the New York Public Library, as well as the Harvard, Stanford, Oxford and the University of Michigan libraries. Since 2004, the company has already scanned over a million books and plans to increase this number to 15 million over the next ten years. Books are placed in Google’s own search index, which is denied access by other search engines.
The news of freezing the Live Search Books and Live Search Academic services came a few days after Microsoft officially announced that it would focus on some specific areas of Internet search in which it can compete with Google. Obviously, full-text book search does not apply to such areas. It is unlikely that such a service can be easily monetized, especially since the cost of scanning is very high. In principle, this is a rather specific field of search, the number of users of which is limited to librarians, researchers, the most inquisitive students, and so on. However, experts emphasize that such people are among the “early adopters” and have a great influence on the total mass of users.
Both Google and Microsoft have been scanning old books and magazines that have already become national property by prescription. In addition, Google without permission scans copyrighted work and gives out search queries for small quotes from these books, which does not contradict the law on copyright and related rights, although it causes fury of book publishers.
Before the project was discontinued, Microsoft managed to scan and index 750,000 books and 80 million journal articles. Most of the work was done for Microsoft’s money by the nonprofit Internet Archive (by the way, some libraries preferred to deal with this organization rather than with Google, because of the limitations that Google imposes on digital files). Now the Internet Archive has to look for a new sponsor to continue scanning 1000 books a day.
')
Google collaborates with the New York Public Library, as well as the Harvard, Stanford, Oxford and the University of Michigan libraries. Since 2004, the company has already scanned over a million books and plans to increase this number to 15 million over the next ten years. Books are placed in Google’s own search index, which is denied access by other search engines.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/26170/
All Articles