Google Book Search is no longer tethered to the PC. Earlier today, Google announced that its service, which provides free access to scans of public domain books, would immediately be available to users of iPhones and Android mobile phones. I tested it on my 3G iPhone by pointing my browser to http://books.google.com/m, where I perused William Shakespeare's play "Titus Andronicus" and Victor Hugo's novel "The Hunchback of Notre Dame."

As one would expect of Google, the service is quick and responsive. There's a dialog box that lets you search for new books, links to books that you've recently viewed; a short list of featured books; and a list of categories ranging from Adventure to Travel. Once you've made a selection, you'll be dropped into the start of the book. Each Web page contains 10 or so scanned pages' worth of text; you can advance Web page by Web page, or navigate via a table of contents. You can even click on individual paragraphs to load in the original scanned image of that paragraph.

Even so, Google Book Search mobile isn't perfect. It would have been nice if Google had reformatted the text to better suit the iPhone screen's dimensions. Or let me change the size of the fonts. Or download the entire text for offline reading. Nevertheless, it's a nice first step, and I'm curious to see what Google will do next with it.