Generating an image from the PDF server-side is the only way to faithfully perserve the layout of the PDF. For some PDFs, Google will give you the option to vi

Generating an image from the PDF server-side is the only way to faithfully perserve the layout of the PDF. For some PDFs, Google will give you the option to view it as HTML (it seems to just be the PDFs returned in search results?). It's usable for mostly-text documents, but that's about it.