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 I remember MS Academic Search to be very useful, which thereafter remained as is to the point of being clearly outdated.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.