Google, in its endeavor in making the web a beautiful place for people spending their time online,  has published a font directory. The Google Font Directory acts as a site directory for all the fonts available via the Google Fonts API.

The Google Font Directory provides high-quality web fonts that you can include in your pages using the Google Font API. And it is free.

The fonts in the directory are all released under open source licenses. And you are allowed to use them on any non-commercial or commercial project.

Google Font API supports all main stream web browsers including Firefox, Opera, Google Chrome, Apple Safari and Microsoft Internet Explorer. However, as of this writing, mobile gadgets such as iPad, iPhone, iPod, or Android are not supported.

You have to be aware of a few drawbacks in using web fonts before starting to use them on your websites.

Firstly, if a website uses Google web fonts, the fonts have to be initially downloaded to the site visitor’s  computer. So there may be a slight delay depending on the speed of your Internet connection. The fonts will then be cached in the browser for future use.

Also using web fonts may result in the browser making more HTTP requests than ordinarily required.

Adding web fonts to your web pages is easy. Check out the following quick start guide to learn how to embed web fonts from Google Font Directory.