eWeek reports in a May 25, 2008 article, Microsoft Expels Book Search: Can Google Cash In?, that Microsoft is ending its Live Search Books and Live Search Academic software projects. Under those projects, Microsoft digitized 750,000 books and indexed 80 million journal articles.
Microsoft is apparently ending the projects because it doesn't see them as revenue generating projects. Thankfully, Google, whose own efforts led Microsoft to embark on similar projects, will continue its efforts to digitize books. The Google Book Search Library Project allows one to view snippets of books still under copyright and to download the entire contents of books that are no longer under copyright.
