Google Books : A Revolution
Posted on November 7, 2008 in Education by Shayani
October, 2004 had seen Google launching Google print which is now known as Book Search. It was introduced in the Frankfurt Book Fair, since then there has been no looking back.
What is Google Books?
It is a tool provided by Google that searches the full text of books that Google scans.
What is the Utility of the tool?
Google books has brought about a revolution by being the first one to start scanning full texts. Many books that are scanned have full access and students and learners can read those books online without having to spend a single cent.
Whenever a relevant topic is given in the search engine, Google books shows three books it has on that subject.
What are the Limitations of the Tool?
There are certain limitations of the tool. Many books are under the copyright rules and are not fully accessible. Only snippet reviews of those books are given in the site.
How many are scanned each day?
Google claims to scan 3000 books each day. It has about seven million scanned books total. One million has full access. The books which do not have copy right can be downloaded in a PDF format.
Competition from Rivals
Google met with a competitor in Microsoft’s Live Search Books; however, it terminated its project of Scanning books May, 2008. Now, all the books it had scanned are to be found in the Internet Archive. At present, it is not earning profits and is second to Google books. It has a collection of about one million scanned books.
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