Google Books has launched a new feature that lets you download and save books using the Chrome web browser, allowing you to read eBooks even when you don’t have an internet connection. That makes Google Books a heck of a lot useful if you’re one of the handful of people that has a Chromebook, or if you just like reading books on a laptop or tablet computer with the Chrome web browser.
You’ll need to install the Google Books app for the Chrome web browser to get started. Once you’ve done that you can fire up the Google eBookstore, hover your mouse over any free or paid book in your account, and check the box that says “Make available offline.”
The web browser will then download the book to your computer. You can free up space by unchecking the box to remove the book.
You don’t have to download books to read them. If you have an active internet connection you can read books in your web browser or using the Google Books apps for Android or iOS.
While this is a welcome development, Amazon’s Cloud Reader is still far more polished.
They really need to extend this to the Android app. Tablets and even phones are not “always connected” rendering google books nearly useless when you need it (on a plane for example).Â
The Android app already downloads books for offline reading.