Microsoft Corp. said on Thursday it would offer improved capacity to search copyrighted books on the Internet as the company battles Google Inc. for advertising dollars from Web-based services. Microsoft said it had received permission from dozens of publishers including Cambridge University Press, McGraw-Hill Cos Inc. and Simon & Schuster, a CBS Corp. unit, to use their copyrighted titles. The changes to its Live Search Books comes months after Microsoft attacked Google for what it called the Web search leader's "cavalier" approach to copyright protection in services like Google Book Search.

Read More..