Great post man! I’ve been looking for a way to do this for years! I’m gonna try it tonight! But I do want to ask about something: “fishing off with exporting the title to a pdf.” Did you mean “finishing”? Keep up the great posts!

Now all we need is an osx version.

This is really bad news. I already have my bash script that only uses wget for downloading Google books.

With this program being released to everybody, Google will certainly change the way how Books are retrieved and maybe start using obscure third party plugins. Which will make harder (if not impossible) to continue downloading them.

For those willing to write their own robot, look at python and urlgrabber/urllib/htmlparser/twisted. Python makes it easy, IMHO.

@anon
I bet.

@LukeS
TIP: Viewable pages are randomized for each visitor.

You idiots! Now that this is public google will close it, and it will further help those who plan to stop google indexing books! Who the h*ll decided to release that?

Thank that person for singlehandedly making sure google does not have a book index and you never will be able to search through thousands of books easily!

Idiots!

Programs like this are against Google’s terms of service. I got banned from google a while ago for using bots to download books.

This is a stupid idea.

I tried it, but it was taking too long so I nixed it. Also, Google books then told me I had a virus (which I don’t) and refused me access, heh. There are better alternatives…

At least last time hackaday covered this sort of thing, it wasn’t directly advocating piracy.

hackaday–

Maybe I just don’t get it, but has anyone really found Google Books to be that useful? Don’t get me wrong, I think archiving and indexing all books is a fantastic idea, but every time I’ve tried to use the service the only relevant results are limited previews. I mean, 10 out of 10 getting those Amazon.com referrals, but it rarely does me much good.

@darksim905
I personally find it very useful, specially for previewing University course related books. Books are also indexed by content which means you really find relevant text by content and not only by title and abstract which used to happen on traditional libraries. But I guess you don’t read much do you? (game reviews or walkthroughs doesn’t count)

IMHO Google books works very well as it is. It is very lightweight and doesn’t require third party plugins (like most of Google services).

“So this guy wrote a program to automate a process. If they change their method, the guy will just update the program or find someone else who knows how to do it.”

If they start using some proprietary browser plugin to obfuscate the code then, TBH, I don’t really believe a guy who writes code in .NET has the skills and ability to interpret the plugin’s code.
- And that is why I’m pissed off! I don’t want more fscking plugins!

waaawaaawaaaah. hack a day comments have more retards than than youtube ones.

Why couldn’t a person just use Project Gutenberg? Sure, not everything comes as a fancy PDF, but it certainly seems more straight-forward.

@lubingupyourlittlesister: You are right. Everyone, I would like to set [lubingupyourlittlesister]‘s comment as a prime example of what a mature comment consists of. You should all be ashamed of yourselves…

i was using this last week and i woke up to a google books banhammer.. only pulled down 103 pages before they noticed. Was a 48 hour ban.. not sure how long it would be if I tried again.

the problem is that most books are crippled, Google usually cut out large parts of them

@ToddM, none of what you mention (console emulators, iphone jailbreaking, hackintosh, and any other repurposing that the original manufacturer/software provider doesnt condone) is not piracy. Don’t steal shit.

actually, Google already presents you with a downloadable PDF for some books (for example, Babbage’s autobiography. So I guess it’s for orphaned works and those with expired copyright only).

it will be quite easy for google to block this thing, so I think a browser plug-in to a google-books-pages exclusive P2P-network would be better. It recieves orders to access a certain page, if it succeeds (since not everybody does), it adds the page to its big cache to share. (somebody implement that?)

@You guys clamouring for a mac version: When you purchased your mac, were you in any way mislead into believing it wasn’t a minority operating system?

I think its funny that people are getting mad about this. I’m sure google anticipated some degree (I don’t even know if you could call it) piracy. After all, the text is there on your screen, whats to stop you from hitting print-screen and pasting a bunch of times. This just makes it easier. =D

Ever stop to think that perhaps google deliberately isn’t too strict with securing this?
They have to do stuff for copyright law but they don’t have to go beyond what’s required surely.

A few months ago Google used to say, “pages xx-yy are absent”. Recently I noticed a change: “pages xx-yy are absent or you viewed too much pages”. Surely it’s because of downloaders like this one :)

too lazy to read comments but i found this when trying to download popular science (which the HAD team STILL has not posted)
http://books.google.com/books?id=wCYDAAAAMBAJ&source=gbs_navlinks_s#all_issues_anchor for anyone interested, nearly every issue of popular science dating back to 1870
google ip bans people fast, get a copy of the onion router(ToR, wow, caps on MY hackaday? more likely than u’d think) if you plan to use this

Useless hack.

The books this bot app fully pulls out are already available in full view mode (PDF or even, for many of them, EPUB). To download them outside the US, just use a proxy.

If you want the links to the images of limited preview books use the Google Books Downloader JS script (with Greasemonkey) and batch download them from within the browser. Or write your own Perl (or Python or whatever) script to automate the process the way you want (my choice).

This chip app will only get your IP banned.

DONT WORKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK

Change your user view to user, and use flash get. Only snags the previews, but I only care about those anyway. As I usually found something from a Google query and the info is on that preview page.

Nice tool so far.
Will Google adjust the code to block this tool ?

http://tiny.cc/mk5rz

To those of you that want a Mac version, here it is: http://hactheplanet.com/mac/googlebookdownloader

Just grab the link with jdownloader and it will get all the pages.

Well well, surely there’s a whole heap of cheap moralists lurking out there…
So all you can think about is “piracy”, “stealing” and “money”? Get a grip, seriously.

The main point is that if you have a good library near home, then you can read whatever you want for free, while if you live only god knows where, you can’t. If this were a way to correct this inequality, it would just be perfect.
Who can seriously think this is like stealing?
It’s just about being able to have access to knowledge.

And what about research work? When you just have to skim through dozens of books in order to find what you really need for your work? Should one spend thousands of dollars in order to buy them all?

Pity that this won’t sit well with authors and copyright-mongers, and will surely hinder google’s cataloguing effort (and thus be countered in no time), but the founding principle is absolutely correct: knowledge shouldn’t be considered a base commodity.
This ain’t piracy, it’s a pale reflection of what the norm should be. Knowledge isn’t just power, but is also at the base of REAL democracy.

How do i know the links to the book or its isbn number or its code in order to download?

please anyone… give me help for use these program.
i only want 1 book, but i can’t download it:(
can anyone help me?
thanks

cant find the software!can someone send the e-mail plzzz

This is really idiot idea!
If every one try to download Google books then definitely Google will be close Google book service. Its a online service. Don’t do it! Don’t lost big opportunity.