Yeah, it's called a search engine. Kids have been doing this on their own for years.
One of my kids needed a physics text book whose 9th edition is almost $200 new. He found the 5th edition (almost identical and brand new with the CD that comes with it still unopened) for 11 cents on ebay. They only difference is that the order of the problems is scrambled.
There are tons of used books on ebay and Amazon. And, of course, advertised on flyers on college dorm walls.
When I was in college I remember scraping together whatever money I could for a semester’s worth of books that usually ran around $300 to $500 THEN. One semester I remember a tab of $650. The state college bookstore also kindly included two or three credit card applications in the bag after purchase.
They used to buy our used books back after the semester...for $5 per book...and then resell them to others for more than ten times that amount. If I had the internet back then I would have scoured the country for discount, used, old editions or even some black market copies.
College bookstores are state-sanctioned ripoffs. More often than not one could have managed through the semester without more than a few of the books, which the professors wanted us to buy and then referenced for maybe one week of work.