Just when you thought Google was running out of tricks, the Internet juggernaut has launched another free new search service aimed at scientists and academic researchers. Google Scholar, which debuted last night, is a product of the company teaming up with a number of scientific and academic publishers. Scholar was devised to be a first stop for researchers looking for scholarly literature such as peer-reviewed papers, books, abstracts and technical reports -- the perfect place you could review some of the same scientific papers I do in posting news on my Web site.
So far, it isn't known how many additional documents and books had been indexed and made searchable through the service. While the most recent scholarly papers and periodicals are indexed online, many have not been easily accessible to the public.
The new Google service, which includes a listing of scientific citations as well as ways to find materials at libraries that are not online, will not initially include the text advertisements that are shown on standard pages for Google search results.
How it began was pretty simple: As a student, Anurag Acharya, wanted to address a problem -- out-of-date library materials -- he confronted as an undergraduate in India, reflecting the movement researchers and students to online search engines.
New York Times November 18, 2004