Quick view of PDFs in your Google search results

During your search experience on Google you would have come across many links with PDF extension a click on which would have resulted in your Adobe or other PDF viewer application getting opened and you viewing the file. The catch here is that if you do not have any PDF viewer application, Google offered you an alternative which was to view the file as HTML in the browser itself. This though was a faster alternative it lead to loss of the formatting from the original PDF, such as graphics, tables, fonts and other elements.

Today, Google has added a new link to "Quick View" PDF documents in your browser itself with the formatting intact. The new links are based on the same technology that's available in Google Docs and Gmail. Google had rolled this technology out to the search results page since July, and as of today they have added "Quick View" links to more than 50% of the PDFs in their index.

For example, here is a search result for the term "Form 16"

A click on "Quick View" will open up the PDF right in your browser with graphics, formatting and tables preserved. Following is what it looks like after opening: