Google has announced new features that bookworms will find particularly useful. You can now select words in Google eBooks and look up their definitions, translate them, or search for them elsewhere in the book. All of this can be done from within the Google eBooks Web Reader without looking away and losing your page.

To select text in a Google eBook within the Web Reader, double-click or highlight it with your mouse and a pop-up menu will open with the following options: Define, Translate, Search Book, Search Google, and Search Wikipedia.

If you choose Define, a pop-up will display a definition of the word via the Google Dictionary, without leaving the page you're on in the Google eBook. The audio icon to the left of the word will allow you to hear the definition pronounced aloud. You can also select More to go to the Google Dictionary page for the word, which provides additional information like usage examples and web definitions, although it will force you have to leave your eBook. If you choose Translate, you can also translate a single word or several sentences of content into dozens of languages, and again you'll see the translated text displayed in the pop-up window.

If you choose one of the search options, you can search for the selected text in other places, within the eBook itself, or across the entire web. Search Book brings up all the instances in which the selected text appears in the eBook while Search Google and Search Wikipedia open up a new browser tab displaying the search results for that text on Google or Wikipedia, respectively.

Back in December 2010, Google launched the Google eBookstore with more than 3 million titles. Google eBooks is compatible with laptops, netbooks, tablets, smartphones, and e-readers. The Google eBooks Web Reader, which works in all modern browsers, lets a user buy, store, and read Google eBooks in the cloud.