Open Content Alliance

From Jeffrey Young's article in the Chronicle of Higher Ed:

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....snip....Danielle Tiedt, a general manager at MSN, said the company believed it was a good idea to join with rivals in the alliance to scan books, so that books would not be scanned repeatedly by competing companies and so that Microsoft could focus its energies on improving its search technology....

"Ms. Tiedt said that Microsoft planned to focus on adding book collections that would provide answers to Internet search requests that current online sources cannot provide. The company estimates that more than 50 percent of online queries go unanswered using today's search engines. [my emphasis]

"The Web doesn't have all the answers," said Ms. Tiedt. "Given that the Web only has about 10 years of information, it's not surprising that it doesn't have all the answers to people's questions."
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