Exploring Big Data

This page allows you to explore one of the biggest data sets that is publicly available - Google's index of the content of over 25 million books written from 1800-2008.

Exploring this database is like information archeology - you can get a feel for what people were concerned about (writing about) long before their internet searches and social media posts were tracked. 

Some sample charts are below, or click here to create your own!

(In the sample charts below, mouse over the labels and lines for more details.)

Select a chart: Customize a copy of this chart