Microsoft will no longer feature book search as a separate search product, choosing to close that program but integrate existing information into the regular search results:

Today we informed our partners that we are ending the Live Search Books and Live Search Academic projects and that both sites will be taken down next week. Books and scholarly publications will continue to be integrated into our Search results, but not through separate indexes.

At first glance this may not seem significant but I think it is a sign of important (and unfortunate) online trend away from academic applications. Microsoft has a lot of spare cash, and closing small programs is a strong indication that they see absolutely no commercial potential here.

The promise of the internet as a research and academic tool has been more fully realized as the commercial applications have exploded. Yet the academic uses of the internet that started the whole ball rolling have not seen anything like the innovation that has come to the commercial space. The most promising academic/commercial approach appeared to be Google’s project that would have provided textbooks at no or low cost but I have not heard much about that recently.

However hopefully the problem here is not that academic applications are doomed to die out., rather this is just a case of more death at Microsoft’s Live Search, which has failed to grow much if any of a brand despite Microsoft’s huge investment in the Live Search project.

Source: Microsoft