Death of Live Search Academic and Live Search Books

So Microsoft have pulled the plug on their Live Search Academic and Live Search Books programmes. The content as exists will remain in the generic Microsoft Live Search, but the two separate search facilities will be no more. Set up to rival Google's digitisation projects and Google Scholar, the hope was that the content would lure more users to go to Live Search. This did not happen, and there was found to be no sustainable business case for continuation, which means that Google has moved into an even stronger position with its Scholar and Book Search.