I don’t know how long this has been going on. I don’t recall seeing any announcement by Google about this. It seems to me this is a major change and would have made a splash. Maybe I missed it because PDF is not interesting to me?
Previously, when encountering a PDF document in a Google search result, there was a View As HTML option. Now this seems to be getting replaced with an option simply called View.
Click = big
What’s interesting about this is that it launches that PDF into Google Docs, where it’s now displayed as a full PDF, with all formatting seemingly intact!
Just plop PDF into Google’s search box and sample the change!
The eBook Test 
So much for Adobe’s domination of the documentation world! Now, if google only had a builtin epub reader.
[…] Mike Cane notices that Google search results is now opening up PDFs directly in Google Docs. […]
@Nagle: I wouldn’t be surprised if that happens too. But as an iPhone app first.
Maybe Google hasn’t announced this change because it’s not fully implemented — Here’s a search I did that still has mostly “View as HTML” — Note the “filetype:pdf” limit phrase in search is helpful …
flood control site:gov filetype:pdf
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=flood+control+site%3Agov+filetype%3Apdf
8 have “View as HTML”
2 have “View” – Open as Google Doc (one of which fails to open)