Google Books Search Goes Mobile

Feb 5, 2009 at 1:04pm ET by Barry Schwartz

The Google Books Blog announced they have now created a mobile version of Google Books. If you have an iPhone or Android phone just navigate your mobile browser to http://books.google.com/m to start using Google Book search on your mobile device.

There are many differences between the mobile version and the regular version. The most obvious is the look and feel, but the biggest technological difference, as Google explains, is the use of OCR technology. Google Book Search typically shows scans of the page, but if you view the book on a mobile device, they will try to extract the text using OCR and show you plain text, not scanned text.

Here are some screen captures of me playing with the mobile version of Google Book Search:

Home Page:

Search Result Page:

OCR of a book:

Scan of a book:

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.

See more articles by Barry Schwartz >

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