This December, Google surprised us with a tool that works like Google Trends but based on its database of books (Google Books). That is, it tells us what the books it has stored and that date from the year 1800 to the present day are about. It is about Google Ngrams. The official name is «Google Books Ngram Viewer«.
The image shown alongside these lines analyses the appearance of the words “money”, “health” and “love” in the literature of these last two centuries (click on it to see it enlarged).
Isn't it great to have this kind of tool? And it's not just in English, it also has literature in 7 languages (unfortunately Catalan is not one of them yet). In English, it also distinguishes between fiction, best sellers and general literature.
With my students from the online masters from PMasters (UAB) We have been analysing it since Google made it public and we have discussed its use at a business level. The truth is that we have not found it, but at a sociological research level it is a very interesting tool.
If you have a moment, play around with it. Try for example: war and peace, love and hate, rock and pop [these are suggestions from the students 🙂 ], or play around with how cities become fashionable by searching for example: Madrid, Barcelona, Paris, London, Prague, Rome. Or Spain, Italy and France.
A few things: you have to be careful with accents (it discriminates).
I hope everything goes well… and happy 2011!
