Google Celebrates 15 Years of Google Books

Google is celebrating the 15th anniversary of its Google Books service with a new design on desktop and a few new features.

“Fifteen years ago, Google Books set out on an audacious journey to bring the world’s books online so that anyone can access them,” Google’s Haimin Lee writes. “Libraries and publishers around the world helped us chase this goal, and together we’ve created a universal collection where people can discover more than 40 million books in over 400 languages.”

Among the changes is a new design for Google Books on desktop—which Google means “the web”—which provides more information about each title, including its description, author’s history and other works, reader reviews, and options for purchasing or borrowing the book. There are also bibliographies and a citation tool for those using the service for research.

Google is also introducing new tools that help readers learn more about the books they’re reading. A new “Search Inside” feature helps you search for phrases within a book and show you each instance of the phrase in a new tiled interface. Google is also further integrating Books with its Arts & Culture service so that you can more easily find rare and iconic books. Google Arts & Culture also has a new interactive experiment that lets users browse the Google Books collection using artwork.