December 17th, 2010

The Fall And Rise Of Twitter In English Literature

Words come and go, and now thanks to a new Google database of 500 billion words in 5.2 million books, you can chart the popularity of words in literature and other books going back hundreds of years. The database is can be accessed by scholars or anyone through a Google Labs project called the Google Books Ngram Viewer. You type in a word, and it charts the usage of that word over… → Read More

July 2nd, 2009

As The DOJ Pounces, Google Makes Book Search Even Better

Google received some unfortunate news today, with the U.S. Department of Justice formally announcing the investigation of the $125 million settlement Google made with the Author’s Guild to pay authors a nominal fee for copyrighted works it has scanned and made available on the Web. The settlement has drawn its fair share of critics, including Jeff Bezos. But Google keeps on plugging away… → Read More

June 18th, 2009

Google Books Adds New Features And Tools

Google has launched a bunch of new features to Google Books in an effort to promote interactivity between readers and the online books.

1. Embeddable previews of books: This new feature allows you to embed a preview of a full view or partner book in your websites or blogs, just like you would with a YouTube video. You can also copy and paste a url link in an email to share the book with your… → Read More

June 7th, 2009

Scan Your Books And Search Them On Google

One of the most useful, if often-overlooked, features of Google Book Search is the ability to enter your own books and create a personal library which you can then search if Google has scanned those books. (And chances are it probably has). If you are trying to find a passage or a factoid you once read but can’t remember the book no matter how hard you wrack your brain, the ability to search… → Read More

February 11th, 2009

Google Book Settlement Site Is Up; Paying Authors $60 Per Scanned Book

Last October, Google signed a $125 million settlement with the Author’s Guild to pay authors for copyrighted works it has scanned and made available on the Web through its Google Book Search project. More than 7 million books have been scanned by Google so far, a large portion of them out of print. Today, the Google Book Settlement site went up, which allows authors and other copyright holders… → Read More

February 5th, 2009

Google's Answer To The Kindle?

If you ever get a craving for classic literature while on the go, Google’s just given you the ability to check out your favorite literary works via an iPhone or Android phone. Google’s Book Search currently features 1.5 million public domain books, which have all been optimized to fit a mobile screen. Unfortunately, Blackberrys and other non-Android operating system phones are out of luck in… → Read More

December 31st, 2008

Google's Top Ten Products (More Or Less)

Can you name Google’s top ten products? If you look at how Quantcast ranks Google’s subdomains, you can get a sense of which Google products are the most popular, since they each have their own subdomain. Google’s main search engine tops the list with an estimated 136.6 million unique visitors in the U.S. Then comes Google Maps (36 million), Image Search (31.7 million), and Gmail (10.5 million). → Read More