Just in time for the busy holiday book-buying season, Google announces a new version of it's Book Search service.  Like many existing products in the portfolio of Google services, Book Search now offers many features previously only found in stand-alone applications.  Nathan Naze of the Google Book Search team highlights 6 new features in the revamped service:

1. Zoom:  You can now zoom in and out of scanned text and images.  Handy magnifying glass icons above the viewing window make it as easy as point-n-click.
2. Scrolling Pages:  Like other Google products, reloading has been minimized or reduced all together.  Two handy views (one page and two page mode) allow the entire book to be scrolled through without multiple pages or reloading.
3. Navigation Improvements:  Users can now scroll pages with the scrollbar, mouse wheel, click-n-drag, and the keyboard.  The space bar, arrow keys, and page up/down keys are supported.  In addition, some books have clickable table of contents.
4. Increased Viewing Space:  Google has cleaned up the interface to allow more viewing space for the book.  Information on the book is now housed together in a side bar on the right side of the screen.  A fullscreen option removes the sidebar and uses the entire window for book viewing.
5. About this Book:  The "About this Book" page for each book has been improved to show better copyright information, more about the book being viewed, and suggestions of other books that might be of interest based on the book you're currently looking at.
6. Citations and References:  Google has integrated its Google Scholar project with Google Book Search.  Now, when something in Google Scholar references a book you're looking at, that reference will show up in Book Search.

Before you spend time (and money) hunting down books this holiday season, check Google Book Search to find them.  For one, there are direct links to buy many books from several online book sellers.  Let them do the work!  Secondly, you can get an idea of what the book looks like to make spotting in the endless rows of text at the bookstore even easier.

With these improvements, Google has created yet another product that works like an application, but plays like a webpage.