Google Books
Shares rank 2 of 4 book discovery sites by recommenders
People recommend Google Books for public domain books, old magazines and newspapers, and historical research. Critics agree that previews cut off after a few pages and search results have declined.
People recommend Google Books for public domain books, old magazines and newspapers, and historical research. Critics agree that previews cut off after a few pages and search results have declined.
41 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 22
- criticize it
- 19
- approval share
- 54%
Recommended in 10 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 22 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.1 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 10 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Finding DRM-free ebook files
“I’ve bought Tor books from Google Play and gotten DRM‐free EPUB files from it.”
Comment from 28 Jun 2026 in “Show HN: DRM-Free Books” “Key marker for DRM‐free: “Content protection: This content is DRM free.””
Comment from 8 Apr 2026 in “Kindle to end store downloads and registering for 1st-5th gen kindles in May” “Yes, Kobo, Google Play Books both carry them.”
Comment from 28 Jun 2026 in “Show HN: DRM-Free Books” Public domain books and periodicals
“Since I pretty much only use Google Books for public domain books, old magazines, and newspapers I haven't noticed any problem with it.”
Comment from 26 Jan 2026 in “Google Books has been effectively killed by the last algorithm update” “I like to use Google books to refer to old issues of PC Magazine.”
Comment from 9 Jul 2026 in “Meta reuses old RAM in new servers with custom bridge chip” Broad access to world knowledge
“for a brief, glorious moment Google came closest to achieving the dream of making accessible all the world's knowledge”
Comment from 21 Oct 2026 in “Academics have a duty to defend open knowledge systems like Wikipedia” “one of the greatest storehouses of readily available knowledge in the world”
Comment from 21 Aug 2026 in “AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late” Good for historical research
“Google Books helped me many time to find manuscripts or old books that were not OCR'd properly.”
Comment from 27 Jan 2026 in “Google Books has been effectively killed by the last algorithm update” “it's now much easier to extract historical data from old documents from Google Books”
Comment from 9 Sep 2026 in “The Microeconomics of Artificial Intelligence (2025)”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Search results have degraded
“Google Books is long dead. If you click on the author's name in one of the results, it will search inauthor:"Author's Name" and this search will return garbage”
Comment from 26 Jan 2026 in “Google Books has been effectively killed by the last algorithm update” “Google has seemingly entirely removed search functionality from most books”
Comment from 26 Jan 2026 in “Google Books has been effectively killed by the last algorithm update” “Overnight the results went from pretty good to absolute trash.”
Comment from 26 Jan 2026 in “Google Books has been effectively killed by the last algorithm update” - Comment from 26 Jan 2026 in “Google Books has been effectively killed by the last algorithm update”
Previews cut off after few pages
“Reading a preview in Google Books helps but you only get so many pages before you're cut off”
Comment from 18 Apr 2026 in “Slop Cop” “Whenever I need something from Google Books I inevitably reach the message that this is a limited preview and the part I need is not included.”
Comment from 21 Aug 2026 in “AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late”
Other book discovery sites people recommend
The three most recommended other book discovery sites, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Goodreads-trained book recommendation model | 25 | 11 | 69% | 1 | — | — |
| Google BooksThis page | 22 | 19 | 54% | 10 | — | — |
| HackerBooks by DOSAYGO-STUDIO | 22 | 9 | 71% | 3 | — | — |
| Shepherd book recommendations | 5 | 2 | 71% | 3 | — | — |
What people said
40 of the 45 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Google books is amazing but they won't let you use it for commercial purposes”
“for a brief, glorious moment Google came closest to achieving the dream of making accessible all the world's knowledge”
“google OTOH already had a lot of this dataset in their possession (e.g. Google Books etc), still questionably licensed”
“get out of the Kindle/Play Books ecosystem”
“I am quite disappointed by seeing all this cool AI stuff and yet the same Play Books.”
“The voice system there is pretty out of date.”
“Play Books also sends push notifications telling you to buy particular books; it's also opt out.”
“you get a whole bunch of fake knock-offs alongside the real book”
“it's now much easier to extract historical data from old documents from Google Books”
“Yes, please remember to say “Thank you, Google.””
“preserved in the hands of someone that will never make them accessible”
“If so there's still value to it: it helps you identify the book so you do an inter-library loan”
“I'd be worried about how much they'd be charging for access once they had the monopoly on so many rare books.”
“Google was establishing a technical precedent to corrode what libraries have the power to do”
“one of the greatest storehouses of readily available knowledge in the world”
“Whenever I need something from Google Books I inevitably reach the message that this is a limited preview and the part I need is not included.”
“the Google that is today cannot be trusted with data of public value anymore”
“a lot of their scans are straight garbage and need to be redone”
“But now Google has locked it behind a limited preview.”
“In retrospect it looks like they were pretty forward thinking!”
“It now captchas every single pageload if you don't want to accept cookies.”
“(GMail, Search, Drive, K8s, Android, Patents, Books, Nest”
“I like to use Google books to refer to old issues of PC Magazine.”
“Yes, Kobo, Google Play Books both carry them.”
“I’ve bought Tor books from Google Play and gotten DRM‐free EPUB files from it.”
“You get DRM locked copies regardless of if you buy them from Amazon or Kobo (or Google Play Store).”
“Reading a preview in Google Books helps but you only get so many pages before you're cut off”
“Key marker for DRM‐free: “Content protection: This content is DRM free.””
“Google Books is inconsistent across regions.”
“I'm addicted to Google Books, and nobody is offering to replace that.”
“Google Books helped me many time to find manuscripts or old books that were not OCR'd properly.”
“Then it would have been hella useful.”
“Google Books is long dead. If you click on the author's name in one of the results, it will search inauthor:"Author's Name" and this search will return garbage”
“the search results went from pretty good to absolute garbage”
“Since I pretty much only use Google Books for public domain books, old magazines, and newspapers I haven't noticed any problem with it.”
“Google has seemingly entirely removed search functionality from most books”
“Overnight the results went from pretty good to absolute trash.”
“All had huge temporal mislabeling problems.”
“Google Books is currently a shell of its former self.”
“Google removed a ridiculous amount of material during the dispute with the Author's Guild.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.