books.google.com is out!
 

Just look at search: sherlock holmes

Ranks number 1, wiki 2, thats a -1 for all the "book names"

If i was a copyright owner of the book i would be quite unhappy about this development.

The pages appear to be in "image format", takes forever to download (i have high speed connection).

I don't see an option to print, but i do see sponsored links on the bottom.

Copyright infringement is a profitable business...
Youtube
books.google.com

They should try mp3.google.com and allow downloads of all the songs in the world. It will be an instant success!

Amazing what a ton of money will get you.

I went through the search you talked about and downloaded the book to see what was going on. It seems that they say that the book has been around long enough that the copyright or legal team that protects it has expired. Therefore the book is now in public domain and can be distributed in this manner. Crazy times we live in :(

Copyright is good for .... 70 years?

All the books I looked at had this:

And they said "copyrighted material" on them.

Either way it looks like a pretty cool service.

wow, this will be awesome for college kids tho

Yeah it seems that if the book still has a copyright this is the case. If not you can download the whole book.

Not sure :Oh crap

Look up "Google Hacks" and pay em back ;)