Google: 500 Billion Words To Search
The NY Times reports: “With little fanfare, Google has made a mammoth database culled from nearly 5.2 million digitized books available to the public for free downloads and online searches, opening a new landscape of possibilities for research and education in the humanities. The digital storehouse, which comprises words and short phrases as well as a year-by-year count of how often they appear, represents the first time a data set of this magnitude are at the disposal” of the masses. My favorite random search in the New York Times article is culinary: a search follows the ascent of “grilling†from the late 1990s until it outpaced “roasting†and “frying†in 2004.
