To read a book, no need to rush into library , don’t waste time in roaming around to ask friends. All you need to do is, just switch on laptop, open “Google Books”, search for it. Download the book if you want,sit, relax and read. How simple it is!!

Google Book Search is a service from Google that searches the full text of books that Google scans, converts to text using optical character recognition, and stores in its digital database. The service was formerly known as Google Print when it was introduced at theFrankfurt Book Fair in October 2004. When relevant to a user’s keyword search, up to three results from the Google Book Search index are displayed above search results in the Google Web Search service (google.com).

Google Books offer free downloads of books and more than one million more public domain books in an additional format, EPUB. By adding support for EPUB downloads, these books are more accessible by helping people around the world to find and read them in more places. More people are turning to new reading devices to access digital books, and many such phones, netbooks, and e-ink readers have smaller screens that don’t readily render image-based PDF versions of the books are scanned.

EPUB is a lightweight text-based digital book format that allows the text to automatically conform (or “reflow”) to these smaller screens. And because EPUB is a free, open standard supported by a growing ecosystem of digital reading devices, works you download from Google Books as EPUBs won’t be tied to or locked into a particular device.

To get started, just find any public domain book on Google Books and click on the Download button in the toolbar.

We can even search  based on words, phrase, content,language title,author,publisher,subject,publication date,ISBN,ISSN etc.If you want to search follow this link http://books.google.com/advanced_book_search.

But publishers and authors gathered together to file a class action lawsuit against Google Books in 2006.The U.S. Department of Justice opened a formal investigation into the settlement between Google and book publishers over the digital publishing rights to certain books, citing antitrust concerns.

After a hearing in Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York on Wednesday morning, JudgeDenny Chin set Nov. 9 as the date by which Google and its partners must submit a revised settlement for the court’s preliminary approval. The rivals  will continue pressurizing Google  on  this settlement anyhow. Lets hope for the best deal..

Source: online.wsj.com, booksearch.blogspot.com, news.cnet.com