> Whenever I need something from Google Books I inevitably reach the message that this is a limited preview and the part I need is not included.

> I therefore feel the same way about Google Books that how I felt when I learned that What.cd went down: that I don't gain or lose anything anyway because I never had access to begin with, and that by not making it 100% publicly accessible you're asking for the data to one day disappear forever.

Can you still search the restricted parts? If so there's still value to it: it helps you identify the book so you do an inter-library loan to get at the full content. Sure, it's not frictionless, but I wouldn't be all or nothing about it.