Google has released a new product called the Google Docs Viewer. This is a way to display PDFs, Powerpoints and TIFF documents directly in a web browser without requiring a download.

"Last year, we added PDF upload and view to Google Docs, and the ‘View’ link for PDF attachments in Gmail," says Google software engineer Jesse Kinkead. "We also added support for viewing PowerPoint and TIFF files in Gmail this April. Feedback on these features has been very positive – viewing files right in your browser is fast, and it keeps your downloads folder clean. Plus, it spares you the hassle of saving your files to the machine you’re using, which could be a shared or public computer."

To use the Google Docs Viewer, simply go to the site and provide Google with the URL to your file. You can also include optional link text.

You can also generate code for an embedded viewer like the one below.

Box.net users can use the service to view documents stored within their Boxes, by adding the Google Docs Viewer OpenBox Service to their account.

A while back, Google introduced a viewer in Gmail for PDFs, and that has now been improved upon to support TIFF and PowerPoint documents. This means you can view PDFs, PPTs, and TIFFs in Gmail right from your browser without having to save them or have any additional software.

Marc Miller on the Gmail notes that Gmail has had a "view as slideshow" option for PowerPoint files for a while, but the conversion technology is now integrated into this viewer.

There are more features with this viewer than with the old "view as slideshow" version, including zooming in and out, selecting text to copy/paste, and "printing" the presentation to a PDF document. You also don’t have to have a Flash plugin to run it like in the past.

"I don’t know about you, but the TIFF files I receive are almost always multiple-page faxes — and the default TIFF viewer on my computer only shows me the first page," says Miller. "It’s quite frustrating."

This viewer is powered by Google Docs and shows every page and provides the "print" option to prepare a ready-to-print PDF file. You can also upload documents right to Google Docs for further editing.