Call it a stroke of genius but Google seems to have technically made the iPhone as eReaders of their new mobile version for its Book Search site. These handsets can access a wealth of free material right at the user’s fingertips.

Book Search works by displaying a scanned version of the actual book page, but while this reads well on a computer screen, it doesn’t hold up well on a handset. Google has used Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to extract plain text from these volumes and the end result is easily readable.

There are over half a million ebooks to choose from (with 1.5 million books if you live in the US), a strong case against investing in an exclusive eReader like Amazon’s Kindle or the Sony Reader.

(Source) Gadget Republic