Google Books (aka Print)

Today was the first time I actually used Google Books. Surprisingly it is very useful. You know when you are studying and you think to yourself...I wonder how this data structure works...or what does this algorithm do? Well as part of a databases homework...I was quickly scanning through Google to look for lecture notes from other universties on B+ Trees. Well I saw the small Google Link for Google Books...so I thought...lets give it a try.

Lo and behold it bought up a tonne of Database Management System books of which one was the recommended textbook for our course. I clicked on it and it gave me a list of pages where the search terms appear on. I read through a bunch of them looking for what I wanted and clicked on a page. Wow...it actually showed the exact page I was looking for allowing you to see 5 pages in total...2 before the page u found and 2 after...and of course the page you are looking at.

What I find amazing about this is that its such an amazing reference section for those of us who dont want to have a library of books at home and only ever need stuff to quote from or to look up small algorithms.

Amazon by the looks of it seem to be taking a slightly different approach trying to sell pages at a time as well as the ability to "upgrade" your purchase to view the entire book online. This may be more appealing to publishers since they are more likely to see this as being in their favour compared to what Google are doing in showing stuff online with no direct payments to any of the publishers (Although publishers will sell more books due to this service in the long run...if someone keeps finding a book useful).