A blogger says the company will unveil a new academic search feature to compete with Google Scholar.Microsoft on April 11 is expected to unveil a new Internet search engine to locate scholarly material, as it steps up its features war with rivals Google and Yahoo.
Windows Live Academic Search, as the feature is known, "has some unique features, and is a worthy competitor," said Dean Giustini, a reference librarian at the University of British Columbia Library, in a blog posting about his experiences with the new facet.
A Microsoft representative said the company has an Internet search announcement set for April 11 but would not reveal additional details.
Academic Search, as Giustini describes it, is part of the usual tit-for-tat features warfare between Microsoft, Yahoo, Google and other Internet search engines. With the exception of Microsoft, these entities derive virtually all of their revenues by placing ads next to search results. So there's constant tinkering with new features to draw in a larger audience for advertisers.
Microsoft is the exception because it operates not only a search engine, found at Live.com or MSN.com, but also a rather successful software-selling business.
What Microsoft is introducing April 11, according to Giustini, is a competitor to Google Scholar, which provides access to peer-reviewed papers, abstracts and articles from academic publishers and other scholarly organizations.
