I see Google is single-handedly attempting to sex-up English literature with the launch of its Book Search service. Following on from Google Videos, Images, Maps and bog-standard searches, it sits neatly with the firm's aim of democratising the world's information…(I'm not going to say 'unless you live in China', that would be too cheap a shot). But as Chas Moloney of Ricoh is suggesting, this might present a little problem for the IT manager who finds his bookish staff trying to print off vast environmentally unfriendly and expensive reams of PDFs from the office machine.

At the moment Google only has its multi-coloured paws on literature in the public domain and for which the copyright has expired, so publishers won't be sweating it just yet, in fact they might see the service as a useful indication of the market for this sort of thing. And according to search intelligence firm Hitwise UK, around 16 percent of downstream visits from Google Book Search UK last week went to websites in the 'Hitwise Shopping and Classifieds - Books' category, so the service may even be helping to promote book sales.

Not sure too many of us are going to be up for reading the complete works of Shakespeare on a PDA though. Anecdotal evidence from IT Week readers – although you lot might be in a minority, sitting in front of a computer screen a fair amount of the day – would suggest that most people like to give their eyes a rest from the flashing colours and dancing pixels and read something more tactile during their free time.