Google has for long been able to read PDF files using Google Docs, their browser Google Chrome though did not have the feature to open PDF files inline and unless you used an Google Chrome extension  to open the PDF files with Google Docs, you would have to download the file to your PC before you could view it.

However, it looks like the latest dev version of Chrome (6.0.495.0 dev) now supports opening PDF files inline in the browser. This means that you can view any PDF documents you want in your browser without needing to download it. If you do need to download a document, just right click the webpage and click "Save as…" from the available options.

This feature is definitely a good one since users would not have to rely on a offline PDF reader to view files and can do so from within the browser itself. I tested this with several documents, out of the 10 I tested, Google Chrome was able to display all the 10 documents inline.