In a move that will ignite a storm of comments and analyses, Microsoft decided to shut down its Live Search Books and Live Search Academic projects.

The announcement was made through an e-mail send to the publishers enrolled in the program and in a post on LiveSearch official blog.

Microsoft acknowledged that its decision comes as disappointing news to its partners, the publishing and academic communities, but it explained that it wants to focus on verticals with high commercial intent, such as travel, and offer users cash back on their purchases from our advertisers. Earlier this week, Microsoft announced Microsoft Live Search Cashback, a service that offers rebates to the customers who will complete purchases by using Live Search engine.

“As we wind down Live Search Books, we are reaching out to participating publishers and libraries. We are encouraging libraries to build on the platform we developed with Kirtas, the Internet Archive, CCS, and others to create digital archives available to library users and search engines,” wrote Satya Nadella, Senior vice president search, portal and advertising on Live Search blog.

Live Search Books contains 750,000 books and indexed 80 million journal articles and Microsoft explained that this content will continue to be integrated into Live Search results, but the separate indexes will be taken down.

Microsoft unveiled the U.S. beta of Live Search Books in December 2006 and its service was considered as a response to Google's Book Search service.

Announced in 2004 as Google Print, Google Books Service was heavily criticized by several publishers and even by Microsoft. The Association of American Publishers and the Authors Guild has even filed a lawsuit against Google, claiming that the company should ask their permission before scanning the books. Google said that so far has digitized over one million books.