An interesting announcement from Microsoft today: they’ve decided to close their Live Search Books and Live Search Academic projects. There would be few people who’d actually remember that Microsoft had Google competitors in this space, but the reason given is where the real interest lies:
“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.”
Microsoft has decided that rather that try to be a full scale Google competitor on many fronts, it’s better off focusing on core services that are “sustainable business models.”
All is not lost for those who partnered with Microsoft in these projects (and remember, a lot of the partners were people who didn’t like what Google was doing), Microsoft will incorporate the index into general search and is “encouraging libraries to build on the platform we developed with Kirtas, the Internet Archive, CCS, and others to create digital archives available to library users and search engines.”
Although the jury is still out on this weeks announcement of the Live Search cash-back promotion, Microsoft’s renewed focus on core search and traffic is a positive strategy at a time consumers need choices as Google comes to dominate the space more and more.
