There's nothing as annoying as accidentally clicking on a PDF link in a list of search results and waiting a few minutes for your Adobe PDF browser plugin to load before you can view the page, go back, or do anything else with your browser. OK, there are probably plenty of things that are more annoying, but it's still kind of bad sometimes.

For ages, Google has helped users get around this by offering the option of clicking a "view as HTML" link next to PDF links in search results. But the truth is that some PDF documents lose formatting, imagery, and other elements when you convert them to HTML. Now Google is starting to roll out the ability to use the same PDF viewer that's available for Gmail and Google Docs with search results.

The simple "view" option isn't available for all PDF links yet. In fact, I had to try at least half a dozen search queries before I found one that didn't give me the "view as HTML" option. So it's likely that Google is converting and caching files rather than converting them on the fly. But the new PDF viewer option is definitely a time saver and a welcome addition to Google search.

[via Google Operating System]