Thanks to Steven Troughton-Smith for testing this and the photos.
First, the NookColor as it was never meant to be — with full Android access:
Click = big
And two photos of the Success: A Novel [or Google Docs link] test PDF from Google Books on the NookColor via Adobe Reader X for Android:
Click = big
Click = big
And one ginormous photo:
Click = ginormous
As for using it, he reports: It takes about 1.5 seconds to render the page, it’s readable without pinch-zoom (and pinch zoom is not remembered page to page, and it takes about five seconds to re-render in pinch zoom). The PDF is treated as a set of images without the ability to select, copy, or highlight text.
It’s interesting that per-page render time is faster than the iPad. On the other hand, the iPad keeps three pages fully-rendered at one time — maybe that accounts for the seemingly longer per-page render time?
Previously here:
Google Books PDF Smackdown: NookColor Vs. Samsung Galaxy Tab Vs. iPad
Mike Cane’s xBlog 
Just bought the NookColor primarily for reading victorian era books on Caribbean History….stats, general data most from Google Books pdfs or Int Digital Archive. Running up to the same trouble with all the Google pdf’s The RED X thing. You’re update re full Android access….HHHow? What does it actually mean? The issue is blowing hard around the NookColor boards but no official response seen anywhere…Heard anything?
Right now, the only way to read Google Books PDFs on a NookColor is to root the device to gain control of it so you can load a PDF viewer that works with Google Books PDFs.
The instructions for that are here:
http://nookdevs.com/NookColor_Rooting
This is very involved, takes a lot of patience and *attention* and if you’re using a Mac, it could take you a lot longer than you imagine. Jane Litte’s rooting via Mac OS took *hours* because of unexpected complications.
The only alternative to this is to hope the NookColor App Store gets a better PDF viewer in it.
The pdf’s only work if you have them in the SD card correct? they wont work if you have them in the internal one because the nookcolor slow pdf reader will popup?
I don’t have a NookColor, so I can’t answer this.