The Redmond giant decided to join the project sponsored by Yahoo and Internet Archive.

Yahoo, the University of California and the Internet Archive started a project a while ago to scan and digitize books in order to make them available online. A similar project is developed by Google but unfortunately The Author’s Guild and The Association of American Publishers filed lawsuits against Google Print accusing the search company of “massive copyright infringementâ€?.

The project started by Yahoo is a bit different because the books it scans are in the public domain and the digitized content will be available for search to any search engine.

After a serious analysis, Microsoft decided to join and committed to pay $5 million for the digitization of 150.000 books. “Given the copyright issues going on right now, it’s a dicey time,” said Danielle Tiedt, general manager of search content acquisition at MSN.

The work will be done by the Internet Archive. Each page scanned costs about 10 cents and an average books has 300 pages.

Microsoft will launch a new service next year called MSN Book Search which will sell e-books and advertisements and also will have a pay per page or monthly subscriptions services. “The business model will change, depending on whether (the book) is out of copyright or in copyright,” Tiedt said.

“Principally and philosophically, we are aligning with the notion that intellectual property should not be proprietary owned by any commercial company,” she added.