Microsoft to Offer Online Book-Content Searches - New York Times

Microsoft to Offer Online Book-Content Searches - New York Times:

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 25 - Microsoft announced Tuesday that it planned to join the online book-search movement with a new service called MSN Book Search.

And in a nod to the growing influence of a recently formed group called the Open Content Alliance, Microsoft announced its plans to join it. The group is working to digitize the contents of millions of books and put them on the Internet, with full text accessible to anyone, while respecting the rights of copyright holders.

Microsoft is making the largest contribution to the alliance to date - $5 million - which is enough to scan about 150,000 books.

In aligning with the Open Content Alliance, MSN is joining forces with its archrival Yahoo, which announced its support of the project this month.

Several universities, including the University of California, Columbia University and Rice University, as well as the Internet Archive and the National Archives of Britain, have joined the alliance.

MSN Book Search will go online in test form early next year. Although the content of out-of-copyright books will be accessible at no charge from MSN Book Search, Microsoft is talking with publishers about how it might charge for books under copyright - perhaps per page, perhaps per chapter.

Snoozefest. No unique value added here. Now, if they would put all these books in Reader format, maybe they might be on the right track…

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