Microsoft yesterday announced on the Live Search Blog that their Academic Search will be closed next week.
And Google Scholar still has shortcomings, including the lack of special limitation features that are found in PubMed. A more detailed comparison of PubMed and Google Scholar can be found in this paper.
Does this announcement simply reflect a shift in strategy at Microsoft, or is academic search no longer interesting to Microsoft, Google, etc.?
Here is the latest update.
MS have also stopped Live Search Books at the same time. Their line is that book results will be part of general Live Search results. Unconvincing.