Google has taken a small but important step both for expanding the reach of its massive library and supporting smartphones as a viable e-book platform with Thursday's release of a mobile-friendly version of its Book Search service.
Using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology, Google has scanned page images from about 1.5 million public domain books and converted them to screen-friendly text.Needless to say, viewing a scanned JPG or PDF isn't exactly ideal on a 2- to 3-inch display, so this digitization magic is what makes it all possible. The new website makes these pages available for easier viewing on devices like the Apple's iPhone and T-Mobile's Android-powered G1. The same books available on the web-accessible version of Google Book Search will be available via the mobile portal, which can be accessed by pointing one's iPhone / Android web browser to http://books.google.com/m.
Google recently reached a settlement with authors and publishers in a 3-year-old lawsuit over scanning and including books in its search. As a part of the settlement, Google set up a site where authors can go and claim their works as well as permit them to be previewed or purchased from the library.
So, eventually, newer books might be included in the mobile version that are for sale.
Is the e-reader revolution finally upon us? Now, we know that demand for Amazon's Kindle has been remarkable, but it would still be a stretch to say that e-books were all the rage amongst the general populace over the past year or so. As Amazon apparently prepares to unveil its next generation Kindle on Monday at a New York City library, the e-tailer is also planning (or at least it appears that way) to offer up its e-reader software to smartphones.
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