Manage updates with the Download AppCNET Editors' review
E-books are changing the way people read, and services like Google Books are leading the way with millions of free titles as well as a growing number of new titles published in electronic book formats, sometimes exclusively. Google Books Downloader is a simple piece of freeware that downloads e-books from Google Books and converts and saves them to a folder of your choice. It can save ebooks as PDF, JPEG, or PNG files that you can view in your browser or e-book reader. With it, Google Books can become your public library.
Google Books Downloader's installer offers two options, Standard and Custom. We chose the custom option, which let us skip an additional program we didn't want that otherwise will be installed with Google Books Downloader. The program's user interface is ultra-simple, just a field for entering a Google Book URL, another for specifying an Output folder, and a Start button. The Output Format menu has three choices -- PDF, JPEG, and PNG -- while the Resolution control let us specify text resolution in pixels ranging from 350px to 1,280px. There's no Help file or other controls beyond a link to the program's Web site.
It took mere moments to find a free title in Google Books. We copied and pasted the e-book's Web address into Google Books Downloader's entry field, selected PDF and 800px, and pressed Start. A progress bar tracked our download and conversion. After a few minutes, the job was done. We opened the output folder and clicked our downloaded e-book. It opened normally in out default PDF viewer, displaying perfectly clear text that stayed legible as we zoomed in and out. Google Books Downloader proved a great tool for quickly downloading e-books from Google Books and saving them to an easy-to-access location for loading them to your e-book reader.
Publisher's Description
From Gbooksdownloader:
Google has announced the launch of its new service, Google Books. Currently, you can purchase books (U.S. only) or download more than three million free books from anywhere in the world using this service. As announced by Google, the aim of this project is to provide users with their own bookshelf on hand, no matter where they are. Purchased or downloaded books can be read using a desktop browser, as well as through mobile devices based on the Android operating system or iOS. Additionally, the books can be read on any e-reader with Adobe Digital Editions software. As opposed to the Picasa service which provides an access to photos, the Google Books service does not allow users to download free electronic editions without digital copy protection and use them on other devices. Google Books Downloader is a little software that allows you to save these books in PDF or JPEG format .
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All versions:
2.0 starsout of 6 votes
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Current version:
1.0 starsout of 2 votes
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My rating:
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Results 1-2 of 2
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"You have to accept adware."
Version: Google Books Downloader 2.3
Pros
Couldn't get over that it insists on user accepting adware before installation.
Cons
Who wants ads interfering with normal web browsing? Not me.
Summary
Didn't even install it.
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"WARNING: installs Claro Search malware trojan"
Version: Google Books Downloader 2.3
Pros
The software actually works and will download a max of 3 books per day. You can download the whole book as long as its full view.
Cons
It installs Claro Search and Claro Toolbar into browsers which is a malware trojan like Babylon search. It collects your personal info passwords, credit card numbers etc. Its tricky to remove, installs into the registry and will undo your firewalls and override security settings in your browser and take over your home page. Its basically another story just like Babylon Search - which i though CNet had fixed. The Google Book Downloader program itself limits you to 3 books per day and the file downloaded is usually a PDF Image which means that the resulting file can not be searched for text. If you can convert using OCR then you will probably not have any issue with this.
Summary
DONT INSTALL IT. The risk far outweighs the reward.
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