Google Print

Google Print makes book content searchable. Books are scanned or, as of March 2005, supplied as Adobe PDF files, and their content is indexed. When you make a search with the word "book" at the start Google will also check its Print index and show links to any books matching the keywords.

Clicking on one of the book links displays the relevant page from the book along with information about the book and where it can be bought. Context Targetted Adverts are also shown below the page.

Google take some precautions to stop searchers viewing and printing the whole book. Unless the publisher or author decides otherwide only 20% of pages can be viewed in a single month, this is enforced using cookies so it is quite easy to hack. Right click is disabled and a large clear image is placed over the book page image using layers to prevent end users from saving the image.

Of course Google hopes to make money from Print, it does this with affliate links to bookstores and from the Context Targeted Adversising. A proportion of this second revenue stream is also paid to the book author. Google print also lets end users search for online reviews of the book, find websites that talk about the book and find it at a library.

Google currently takes an age to scan and put books online

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