Angie M.

About 14 years ago I began using Google Books to read books online for some research I was working on. The subject matter of the project I was working on surrounded the 1800s, and Google Books had so many books from the 1800s scanned and on their site to read and download. Today, most of these books and many others that used to be open to public viewing like a library are no longer available to be read. Many have links attached to them now where someone can click and buy the book. That seems to defeat the purpose of what Google was originally doing with Google Books. Not happy about this at all. I don't want to purchase the books I use in my research, I want to read portions of them that pertain to my research like I would at a good physical library. Google Books is no longer useful. I hope they change back to what they used to be. The excuse for the change can't be due to older books having renewed copyrights, because other library sites on the internet, especially some at some large universities, allow free viewing of the books in their original copyright online.