Google Books was initially started back in 2002 when a group of Google employees pondered how long it would take to scan and archive every book ever written.

While the first scan was done manually on a 300 page book and took 40 minutes to process, Google now use cameras capable of scanning at a rate of 1,000 pages an hour and also work with 20,000 publisher partners who provide content directly. They have also been able to provide over 1 million books that can be read in full from cover to cover; these unrestricted works are either books that have fallen out of copyright or have been provided with publishers express permission.

As well as simply scanning the books, Google performs OCR (Optical Character Recognition) on the pages, thereby turning them in to pure text which can be entered in to their database. As a result when you do a Google Search you are now not only returned results from relevant websites but also your search terms are checked against a library encompassing millions of books and appropriate matches are suggested for further reading.

The integration in to the Google Search engine means you may have already inadvertently stumbled across Google Books but if you haven't and are eager to explore then the Google Books can be found by visiting the site http://books.google.co.uk/ directly. Being a Google service, it almost goes without saying that the service is completely free of charge and is instead paid for via a minimal number of sponsored links which are in no way intrusive or detrimental to the service.

From the Google Books site you can perform searches, add books to your virtual library or organise your collection in a logical manner. Searching for a book and then subsequently clicking on it opens an interface which allows you to either view the directly scanned pages from the book or in some instances a 'plain text' version. This plain text can then be copied and passed to another application or simply printed out for reading offline.

In order to stay within the law, books under copyright have limits placed on the number of viewable pages. Despite the fact that this is akin to simply flicking through the book in a bookshop there have rather predictably been a number of lawsuits.

The most notable lawsuit would have been the case between the Publishing Industry, the Actors Guild and Google which say Google pay out a total of 5 million. This paid not only for court costs of the plaintiffs but also went on to create a 'Book Rights Registry' which collects revenue from sites such as Google and disburses it amongst authors.

On the whole I am again amazed that Google have been able to offer such an incredible gift to the world. Google Books has the potential to preserve centuries of human literacy work for generations to come. It also serves to promote the spread and availability of knowledge amongst all groups and all classes of people.