Google, using optical character-recognition technology, can now scan PDF files, turn them back into text and make them available as search results via the 'View as HTML' link.  By turning images of text into text, Google expands its already massive index. Google's approach doesn't obviate the need to consult the scanned file, however, if it contains images or diagrams. While Google appears to do a good job of converting text, its scans omit graphics. Perhaps in time its engineers will be able to isolate graphic elements in scanned PDFs and insert them into its HTML conversions. One unfortunate consequence of this is that personal information like Social Security numbers that might have gone unnoticed in scans of court documents may now be discoverable through a Google search. Public.Resource.org, a project that aims to make public government publicly accessible, recently found about 1,700 documents with Social Security numbers or alien identification numbers out of a corpus of 2.5 million court documents that go back decades.