Google is over-restrictive on copyrights outside the US. If you are pretty sure you can legally access the material feel free to use a US-based proxy service to view
Google books. For example, go to
http://proxyguy.com/ and
type "books.google.com" into the "Surf Now!" box. You'll get US access.
The main problem is that US copyright law makes most books published before 1909 public domain here. In other countries, most books don't become public domain until 75 years after the death of the author. So you must find out when the author died before you can ethically use
Google Books from your country.
I've never been able to figure out the law for things like magazines and journals that present the
work of multiple authors. Do we have any European copyright experts here? Are they considered joint works that become available 75 years after the last author dies? Or may web sites block access on a per-author page-by-page basis?