In light of Amazon’s recent book search service, this report on CNet about Google in talks with publishers to provide a similar service seems a little strange.

“Google is in talks with several publishers to build a service that would allow Web surfers to search the full text of books online” (via CNet)

IMHO, the service does make sense for Amazon as a way to drive more consumers to book purchases and I suppose it could also turn another revenue source for Google — certainly as a research tool for business and academia, but is the market big enough to support the effort?