How to Nab Free eBooks Using Google

eBooks are an amazing thing, especially with Amazon's Kindle. What's irrtating about eBooks as that you have an infinite selection of books at your fingertips, but they all cost so much! Well, as always, Null Byte has a trick up our sleeves for nabbing free ebooks from Google.

We are going to use some simple Google Dorks to do this. Google dorks are incredibly specific search queries that will land you only wanted information, usually meant for finding easily hacked websites. Here we go!

Google Dorking Queries

First, I'm going to show you the filetype query. I want to find the thinkkspy ebook, a book on Python programming. Enter the following in a Google search bar:

thinkcspy filetype:pdf

And you should get (click on the image to enlarge):

The filetype:pdf parameter tells Google to filter out every search result that doesn't have a file extension ending with ".pdf". The same goes for any other filetype. This a good trick to keep in your arsenal.

Now let's filter out via URL. A good site that shares free ebooks is 4shared. Let's try to get books only from there. Run this through your search:

thinkcspy inurl:4shared

This will yield these results:

As you can see, this brings up many links, the results are exactly what we want. Google filtered them perfectly. So from that, I hope you can find some great eBooks, and put them where they belong, in your brain! Visit the rest of us Byters in the IRC.

Warnings

• Null Byte is not condoning piracy. Download free books that are free. This means if you come across a book that you know costs money, don't download it. Some books are indeed free, and Amazon just wants you to buy from them.

Photo by CarbonNYC