Its interesting how the big guys never truly paid attention to their academic search portals. I remember MS Academic Search to be very useful, which thereafter remained as is to the point of being clearly outdated. And then, on a bright sunny day, discontinued. Only to emerge years later, imbued with a fresh interface, horrible search and confusing UI.

Scholar too felt ignored like its a bastard child, but this new update looks promising, not in term of their changes, but due to the fact that this implies they haven't boxed it yet. Also, they haven't "revamped" the search, so I'm not worried about the core functionality.

Most likely this behavior stems from the fact that this service doesn't generate revenues for them (I'm assuming so, please correct me if I'm wrong). If so, then how does a small company keep up its own academic search portal?: Semantic Scholar by Allen.

> this service doesn't generate revenues for them (I'm assuming so, please correct me if I'm wrong).

Considering that there are quite a few researchers working at Google, I can imagine that the fact that they have this tool available to them indirectly causes some revenue. (And also, goodwill in the academic community, i.e. a community of potential future employees.)

Semantic Scholar is completely non-monetized (and will stay that way as far as I can tell) because Paul Allen pays the bills and has a public interest goal.

Full disclosure: I worked on Semantic Scholar.

Your argument is "it's really good", "they've slightly changed it", "therefore they don't care about it"?

Presumably you'd be happier if the UI changed from week to week?