Slashdot Mirror
Google Betas Google Print
Chronic Infection writes "Google is beta testing a book search service called
Google Print. Here is a list of books included to date." Quick spot checking turned up excerpts like this one for The DaVinci Code, a great book if you haven't read it.
This is simply amazing. First it's amazing that publishers are allowing such a thing. It's also amazing to imagine what we only be in the immediate future for all of us. Knowledge at our fingertips, from web sites, and now from online books whose publishers realize that many, many people will read parts online but will want to purchase a dead tree to read the whole book.
I know Amazon did this first, but I love to see Google taking up the idea. Google is simply my favorite company in the world. They don't take crap from (mostly) anyone, and they run Linux across the board. They are an undeniable force.
It may be risky, but I for one will be investing in Google the moment they release their stock. This is a terrific company and the people that are running it are terrifically smart!
Most of the alleged "excerpts" are nothing of the sort. They're just bibliographic entries.
This would be a really useful service if they could distinguish between the books that have *actual* excerpts and those which just had descriptions, TOCs, etc.