Over the last 15 years or so I have to deal with MS from a business standpoint on many different deals and platforms while I worked for three different companies.

The usual MS methodology is to identify some market segment where someone else is making money, rush in with grandiose plans and promises, do a completely half-ass job, trash the place, and then slink out after a couple of years with a "change in strategy."

Why should book engine search be any different?

MS's legacy is littered with failed business ventures precisely because MS lacks commitment.

And MS lacks commitment because they don't really understand what making a consumer-facing product is all about. They can't analyze a market and construct a viable 5 or 10 year plan for anything other than their OS, which people (reluctantly) are forced to buy.

Its endemic in their culture, and by now we should all be used to it.

I'm an old retired techie who's seen more business plans than any man should, but I remember those first days in the "business" environment. Google rules. Until it doesn't.

Trying to restrict and control the free flow of information for profit, and trying to eliminate possible information flows that *don't* directly lead to money or control - these behaviors are in Microsoft's DNA.

As opposed to Google's, which is letting information for the benefit of all, including those most aiding the free flow. And coming up with more and more useful apps for that purpose. Maps, gmail, notebooks, docs, iGoogle, and on and on.

Information really does want to be free. As long as Microsoft continues attempting to selectively trap and put a yoke on it, it's efforts will be doomed to failure.

Commercial intent? I have literally lost count of the number of books I have bought, yes, bought, after first running across them on a book search/ browse service.

This is very disappointing news as the Microsoft library project was actually much better than the much ballyhooed google project. Microsoft was in a partnership with several other companies including HP and universities and if i recall correctly there biggest academic partner was with the Committee on Institutional Cooperation. The best part was unlike the google project this project was not going to copyright the digital copies of the works.

Where do you suppose the students will be inclined to go, later on, when they're looking for sunglasses?

Unfortunately, probably not Google. I love Google for almost everything, but their shopping portal really needs improvement. I've been trying to use it ever since it started out as Froogle, and it's just not up to the same standards as the rest of Google. MSN's shopping site isn't much better, however. (There are some great tech shopping search sites, but if you're looking for something like sunglasses, I don't think any of the shopping portals do a good job.)

has a better history of monetizing their ideas?

Oh, that one.

Google has, so far, only really made money on its ad products, and that model is showing some cracks.

There is little reason to think that there is any stickiness to search users. Google has deployed some great tools, but so have MSFT, YHOO and many others. Yahoo Maps and Mapquest are great examples-- the incrementally better Google product has all but killed Mapquest and kicked Yahoo maps around pretty good as well. Add the right widget to a competing service, and GOOG's great loss leader loses its dominating position in 5 minutes flat.

As the on-line ad market matures, Google will have to face some tough challenges. What services make eyeballs 'stick'? On-line books might (MSFT is betting they wont, and, again, they have a better track record on anticipating what will make money than most). Search wont, at least not as a standalone.

Nobody has ever got rich betting against MSFT.

OK, he's not dead but he may as well be. Balmer is acting like a bitch.

At some point, MS identified some benefit to the company from digitizing books. Probably the same ones Google did, the same ones mentioned here.

Now MS is walking away because it's too hard, or too expensive? That is completely unlike the company that wound up dominating the computer world precisely because they never walked away, never gave up, until they had won.

There is a good chance that Google is actually a suicide pact. Their latest inovations in search (the only successful and one of the only good products they have) are in direct conflict with their monetization strategy. This hasn't stopped them from doing everything they can to make search better, hasn't even slowed them down. Who knows how they think they can monetize organic search? Who knows if they think they can monetize organic search? They are absolutely comitted to their goal, and that goal isn't making money. Good for them. They deserve to win.

I work on Google Book Search. In his comment, The Jim said a couple of things I'd like to comment on. First, it's Google, and not Microsoft, that is working with the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (the Big 10 universities).

Second, the difference between us and Microsoft that he alludes to at the end of his comment isn't quite accurate; I think he's referring to the fact that we're digitizing some in-copyright books from libraries without express consent of the rightsholder, and Microsoft wasn't. We do this because the rightsholders for many older books can't be found (publishers go out of business; authors die). If the rightsholder surfaces, they can then withdraw their book from Google Book Search whenever they like.

Back when the media player wars and DRM were both new(er), it seemed to me that Microsoft's unstated goal was a visionary day when all producers of "content" would need to sell that content to consumers and that Microsoft was taking the Enron model: they didn't want to produce, and they didn't want to deliver: they wanted to own the pipeline and charge both the producer and consumer for the right to use it.

It's hard to see anything Microsoft does online with any other model in mind. They have put their intellectual and legal capital behind the idea of a unified and proprietary pipeline and format. If they now want to ditch their own scholarly pursuits, it may be a change of focus, but I cannot help but read something else in. It's possible that they feel that their strategy for coming up with a DRM-like lock on such material has proven futile. I.e. their research indicated that they wouldn't be able to come up with a pleasing format that will present a "legal" alternative to Google's "pirate" search, and thereby won't be able to lock out competitors.

With the format wars for images, video, etc., consumers have known as well as anyone else that "unified" standards are nice, but there is a difference to consumers between "unified" and "monopoly." For Microsoft, I don't think there is. Therefore, by being second, Microsoft has lost the capacity to lock data in search, and, unlike when they killed WordPerfect by giving away Word and building in WP killers in Windows 95, they do not have a strategy for making Google not work, either a legal or product strategy. Long may it remain thus.