Amazon recently started to provide full text search of more than 120,000 books, or 33 million pages. I tested the service and found it is very useful. It definitely can bring customers to a much larger scope of book selection.
A letter from CEO Jeff Bezos has been put in the start page of Amazon.com for several days. Amazon must be very proud of the achievement.
One thing I wonder: Yes it is a good service, but can this give a free ride to other booksellers if most people adopt comparison shopping mentality? For me I appreciate Amazon.com for the massive search capability (and the preview of a few pages of most books) but I haven't purchased any books from Amazon.com for long. A price-sensitive customer can always find better deals from overstock.com, half.com and alike. How long will Amazon be able to keep the secret that it is not the price leader anymore?