Microsoft has announced that it's abandoning Book Search (ie search inside a book) and Academic Search as separate products:
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.
This also means that we are winding down our digitization initiatives, including our library scanning and our in-copyright book programs. We recognize that this decision comes as disappointing news to our partners, the publishing and academic communities, and Live Search users.
Howcome? Becasue
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. For example, this past Wednesday we announced our strategy to focus on verticals with high commercial intent, such as travel, and offer users cash back on their purchases from our advertisers.
Oh, that sustainable business model - the one where you pay people money to use you. Not the one used by some other companies where you get advertisers to pay to appear alongside possibly relevant search results.
Google must feel like a more triumphant version of Arthur Dent in The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, as he lies down in front of the bulldozer threatening his house: "I'm game - let's see who rusts first." (Yes, I know how that turns out, but bear with me.) Microsoft can't hack it competing directly with Google, it seems, so it's trying something - though it begins to feel like anything - that's the same, but different. Except not different enough. The bulldozer rusts.
In the words of Danny Sullivan at Searchengineland,
Google somehow seems to be able to run a sustainable business model and devote some energy and resources into indexing books and scholarly information, even if those generate little to no revenue. They do it in part because they think it's good business to provide all types of searches, not just those that will earn them money.
In other words, getting market share wins because it drives your rivals into smaller and smaller niches.
This is something that I thought Microsoft might have figured out.
Ultimately though it feels like Microsoft is trying to fight the wrong fight with Google. Google didn't get big by trying to make a better office suite than Microsoft. It got big by doing something Microsoft wasn't doing. Microsoft is behaving as though the way to go is to try to beat Google. Mistake, I think, especially when the forecast is that Google's search revenue will outpace Microsoft's Windows revenue in 2009.
Instead, if Steve Ballmer were really thinking ahead in the manner of a visionary CEO, he'd be trying to see what the thing after search is.
Which is... what? Tell him here so he can save Microsoft. (Note: we're not certain that Steve Ballmer reads this blog every day, so you might have a little time to ponder this.)
