Google Print is the next big thing to come out of Google, and it's getting a lot of media attention. Google is making deals with book publishers to get the books scanned into a database that will be included in Google web search results. For example, say you search for hitchhiker's guide. You might get a result that reads [BOOK] The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, with some preview text below. The link will go to a page on Google that provides a preview of a matched page, as well as links to information about the book and where you can buy it.

It sounds good, but I find a serious problem with the way that the books are being served to searchers. Google says that you will not be able to use the service to read an entire book online, which is completely understandable. However, the results appear in the regular search results, right with the webpages, PDF files, and Flash files. I don't think this is a good move. Putting the books there is misleading, because users expect to be able to read the whole book. After all, it's a link that supposedly goes to a book (hence the [BOOK]), not a page for information about a book. Results marked with PDF don't link to information about the PDF file, they link to the file itself.

I think the Google Print service is a great idea, and it's a step that will open many doors to Google in the future, but I think they should change the way the results are presented the users. I would personally prefer a separate search type (available in the more section or alongside the links for Images, Groups, etc.), although that isn't a reasonable option until Google gets a larger stash of searchable books.

Update 2004.10.7: It appears as though book results no longer appear. This is probably temporary, due to a change in their system. However, there are now results that are prefixed with [MAGAZINE]. You can search for site:print.google.com inurl:doc to see some examples of results. Google also appears to be working on some kind of directory system, probably categorizing the books by author or publisher. For the moment, you can see some results for the directory system by searching for site:print.google.com inurl:dir, which would give you partially indexed results such as http://print.google.com/print/dir?path=Control_Engineeringw. They've been making lots of changes to the system lately, and the directory system, as well as lookups via ISBN number (which is part of the book system), seem to be down at the moment.

Update 2004.10.8: Check out the book viewing interface. It appears as though you can in fact flip through the pages of the books, but I assume there are limitations, and some books may have more limitations than others.