Comments on: Google book search goes mobile today

By: Aaron Pressman

Aaron Pressman — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 21:32:52 +0000

I agree this is a great step in the right direction but downloading plain text instead of just PDF is key for all us ebook readers. And I don’t see any Google site where you can do that now. Books.google.com still only offerr PDF downloads. I blogged a bit about this today here:
http://gravitationalpull.net/wp/?p=697

By: M-K

M-K — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 04:42:28 +0000

Personally I see this as a large step forward. You folks can carp about not (yet) being able to download the OCRed text from this site (though you can from the regular Google Books site) and about the OCR errors (which, for all we know, Google will be logging corrections to by noting those passages where readers click to view the image version) — but we’re talking about MORE THAN ONE AND A HALF MILLION FREE BOOKS! And if their lawsuit settlement is approved, another 10-20 million will be available for a fee (in part to pay the authors). For heaven’s sake, this is a work in progress. Give credit where credit is due.

By: Mike Cane

Mike Cane — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 02:09:27 +0000

Doesn’t anyone besides me dig below the damned hype?!
http://ebooktest.blogspot.com/2009/02/google-book-search-goes-mobile-teh.html

By: Tamas Simon

Tamas Simon — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 23:57:59 +0000

on a related thought it;s interesting to see poeple counting in number of books… it’s like counting in Gigabytes.
I don’t care how many books are there… I only care if the one I want is there. And presently it’s not – even though Google has already scanned it.
Isn’t that stupid?

By: Tamas Simon

Tamas Simon — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 23:54:50 +0000

If only publishers woke up and cut a deal with Google so that not only free books would be available but stuff that I actually want to read!

By: Allen Goforth

Allen Goforth — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 22:50:40 +0000

Those idiots at Google just don’t get it. The only way I can access those books are with my Ipod Touch. They have had all those great books for years now, but they are useless to most of us, because of the OCRed Pdf format. They do not work on any of the new ebook readers. The same can be said for The Internet Archive. They can both stick those books in their ears as far as I am concerned. There is no brains to get in the way. Google finally has some well formated books and they fix it so they can”t be downloaded.

By: Chris Meadows

Chris Meadows — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 20:08:51 +0000

It’s worth noting that this format doesn’t just work for mobile readers�it also works a lot better than the default PDF-pages view for reading from a web browser window at the desktop.