Google Inc. launched a mobile version of its book search offering, enabling users with devices such as Apple Inc.’s iPhone and T-Mobile USA Inc.’s G1 to access more than 1.5 million works.
The online giant said it formats the titles by extracting text from the page and flowing content to mobile browsers via a process dubbed Optical Character Recognition (OCR) instead of simply presenting digital copies of the text, as the company does for its PC-targeted service.
And computer algorithms must automatically determine the overall structure of the book – identifying headers and footers and locating images, among other things – for the rendered offering to appear similar to the hardcopy, Google said in a post on its book search page.
“The technical challenges are daunting,” according to the post, “but we’ll continue to make enhancements to our OCR and book structure extraction technologies. With this launch, we believe that we’ve taken an important step toward more universal access to books.”
Google’s announcement follows news that Amazon plans to make titles for its popular e-book reader Kindle available on mobile phones. A new version of the Kindle is expected next week.
Strained eyes? Google brings books to iPhone, Android: Search giant expands mobile content offerings
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