MSN Live Book Search

Microsoft has gone head to head with Google on the 'search inside the book' concept over at Live Search Books It's very straightforward and is very similar to the Google offering. The interface is simple and clear, and the results give you various books to view. In the example above the main screen element is displaying the book, and on the left hand side of the screen we have the bibliographic details, with a 'search inside the book option'. Below that the previously searched keywords are displayed in context, so it's easy to jump directly to them.

Consequently I think the best search approach is going to be fairly broad to begin with, choose a title from the results and then really start to narrow down at that point. The main screen can either display part of the page or a click will get you the whole page, which I found slightly small to read comfortably. All of the scanning really looked neat and clear. The entire book can be downloaded as a .pdf file.

Is this going to damage the Google efforts? No, not a bit of it. I can see both services running very much in tandem with each other, and if you don't find what you want with one, you'll simply toddle across to use the other. It would be good if someone could create a little software gizmo type thing to search both in one go though - any takers do let me know!