A British publishing executive roiled by Google’s plan to make books digitally available and searchable staged a brief protest at a recent book fair here, absconding with two of the search-engine giant’s laptop computers to prove his point that it’s no fun when someone steals.

Richard Charkin, CEO of London-based Macmillan Publishers Ltd., staged his moment of civil disobedience at the normally sedate Book Expo held last weekend at the Javits Center.

Apparently infuriated with Google’s plan to scan millions of books into its search-engine database and make snippets of text free to Google users, Charkin and a second person made off with two laptop computers stationed at Google’s display booth. They held them for about an hour before returning them.

His logic: Stealing the computers is a metaphor for Google’s book plan, which he claims effectively steals copyrighted content from publishers and authors.

Charkin wrote on his Web log that he felt “shabby” tricking Google and that they should feel the same for tricking authors.