Category Archives: live_search_books

microsoft launches live search books

Windows Live Search Books, Microsoft’s answer to Google Book Search, is officially up and running and looks and feels pretty much the same as its nemesis. Being a Microsoft product, the interface is clunkier, and they have a bit of catching up to do in terms of navigation and search options. The one substantive difference is that Live Search is mostly limited to out-of-copyright books — i.e. pre-19231927 editions of public domain works. So the little they do have in there is fully accessible, with PDFs available for download. Like Google’s public domain books, however, the scans are of pretty poor quality, and not searchable. Readers point out that Microsoft, unlike Google, does in fact include a layer of low-quality but entirely searchable OCR text in its public domain downloads.
windows live books.jpg