ergophobe - 4:59 pm on Jan 4, 2008 (gmt 0)

Google has recently added (can't remember when, but in the past year), full-text search to Google Books. Of course, it still tends to read "bruin" as "brum" and so forth, just like 10 years ago, so I'm not expecting anything radical soon out of the text out of images patent.

It's great marketing though. By filing patents frequently for technologies that probably aren't even close to workable in the near future, Google appears to be a technology leader and innovator without having to deliver anything and without even promising anything at all. It's much more savvy than the vaporware strategy that got MS so much bad press.