Microsoft was true to its word. If you go to its Live Book Search site today, you will get this message: “We’re sorry, the Live Search Books service is no longer available.” I’m no fan of Microsoft under ANY circumstances; I still firmly believe it to be the Evil Empire. However, the Live Book Search feature was an extremely valuable tool that I used very extensively and with great success during the completion of the retreat book. I will miss having it available as a resource. Microsoft, demonstrating that it’s all about Microsoft and the rest of the world be damned, could have done the right thing and given all of the scanned books to Archive.org, but it has evidently elected not to do so, preferring that they go down with the ship. And that’s the greatest shame of all.
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honestly, what could the harm be in keeping this service up and running? doing service for the user community is something that google understands so well, and microsoft has never comprehended. the goodwill that this service has built with folks who otherwise would have a perfectly reasonable negative attitude on that company has been thrown away. microsoft has never been a customer-centered company, and their operating system and corporate market share is the only reason that i can think of that that are still in business. they do everything imaginable contrary to the concepts of good business and good customer relations. for microsoft, the user community is nothing more than their QA department. it’s a great model for an orwellian company and only seems to work for microsoft. i can’t think of any other software company that requires its users and customers to test their software for them, after of course, it’s been purchased. this miserable decision and the ridiculous corporate marketing blather that went along with would, to most any other company, be a complete and utter embarrassment; for microsoft, it’s just another day at the office. there is no question that google is a far superior company. microsoft’s arrogance and short-sightedness is so boring already. can’t they come up with a new model of business, you know something like, ‘gosh, maybe we should really try hard to satisfy our customers, and let’s build a good, positive brand, that folks will be loyal to! let’s do a public service like scan as many library books as we possibly can, they post them so folks can access the content for free! consider all the time we’ll save our users! think of all the gas money saved in trips to the library that won’t have to be made any more! historians in particular will love us! then, when we get the UI all nice and pretty, and everything is working, and folks all over the world are using this service…. well, then… we’ll just shut it down and go into something that makes us profit! heck, let’s build a portal!
total losers.