Google Book Search is one of Google’s relatively unheralded services, but it is second only to the Google search engine in accomplishing Google’s mission to “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. The amount of information available via Google Book Search is considerable.
Google Book Search has been updated and I am very impressed. It now uses AJAX technology to seamlessly scroll through pages of digitized books. Scrolling seemed just as smooth as using Adobe Reader to view a PDF file. You can also view books in “full screen” mode.
Below is a screenshot of me using URLSnarf to display all of my web browser’s HTTP GET requests. As I scroll through a book in Google Book Search, Google automatically downloads small PNG images in the background (one of the PNG file names shown below is “HyJBeI0ePM0tvlJxRIsaqROQ4WY” with a variable name of “sig”).
