Up until now, Google Books only showed short snippets of books. Now they’ve launched a new service that allows users to download some books to their computers.

It sounds revolutionary, but it’s not much different from what’s offered by other websites: the only books available for download are those in the public domain. Thus, Google isn’t violating copyright laws. And, since it takes decades for books to enter the public domain, there’s an emphases on classics.

Download the Classics (Google Blog)