[Web4lib] MS Windows Live Book Search

[DH MATTISON]

To place this announcement in context, Microsoft is but one member of the Open Content Alliance and this announcement is part of that initiative. When I first read about Yahoo! digitizing books last October, I too had mistakenly assumed that it was a catchup effort on Yahoo!'s part, only to learn that Yahoo! was also a member of the Open Content Alliance.

So it's actually the Open Content Alliance versus Google, not Yahoo! or MSN/Windows Live Book Search versus Google. I have to wonder when Google will join the OCA. This is kind of like the VHS versus Betamax format marketing war. In this case, however, we're probably going to see more than two search interfaces.

BTW, besides the University of Toronto, the list of Canadian OCA partners includes McMaster University, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Simon Fraser University, University of British Columbia, University of Ottawa, and York University.

David Mattison
dmattison at shaw.ca
Ten Thousand Year Blog: http://www.davidmattison.ca/