Fukushima. Osama Bin Laden. The Arab Spring. The Royal Wedding. Natural Disasters. Argentine Soccer Teams. Elizabeth Taylor. Gabrielle Giffords. iPad2 & iPhone 5. Steve Jobs..... Google Presents their 11th annual Zeitgeist: 2011 Year In Review (youtube) "What mattered in 2011? Zeitgeist sorted billions of Google searches to capture the year's 10 fastest-rising global queries and the rest of the spirit of 2011." [more inside]
posted by zarq on Dec 15, 2011 - 26 comments

The BBC's Dimensions site lets you view a range of phenomena overlaid on different parts of the Earth. What if the moon was sitting on Alice Springs? What do the Pakistan floods look like if placed on England? What would the walls of Beijing look like around London? Much more to explore.
posted by Jimbob on Aug 19, 2010 - 11 comments

Let's take a walk through the Google graveyard.
posted by Joe Beese on Aug 18, 2010 - 45 comments

We've discussed it before but why not take a look at So You're Going To Fly, a 1939 Popular Mechanics article aimed at first-time flyers.
posted by The Whelk on Jul 20, 2010 - 35 comments

Biblemap.org is an interactive map system for the bible, which is great for visualising where certain biblical events are said to have occured. It's also great for people who don't subscribe to any kind of organised religion but do like looking at maps (like me!).
posted by Effigy2000 on Jun 14, 2009 - 24 comments

The continuity I have in mind has to do with the nature of information itself or, to put it differently, the inherent instability of texts. In place of the long-term view of technological transformations, which underlies the common notion that we have just entered a new era, the information age, I want to argue that every age was an age of information, each in its own way, and that information has always been unstable. Let's begin with the Internet and work backward in time.

The Library in the New Age by Robert Darnton, historian and Director of the Harvard Library. A wide-ranging overview of the status of libraries in the modern world, touching on such subjects as: journalist poker games, French people liking the smell of books, bibliography at Google, news dissemination in the 18th Century, book piracy and the different texts of Shakespeare. Some responses: Defending the Library of Google, The Future in the Past and Librarians Need a Better Apologetic.
posted by Kattullus on Jun 1, 2008 - 22 comments

"Web History helps deliver more personalized search results based on what you've searched for on Google and which sites you've visited." Google unveils Web History, a new feature to help you "view and manage your web activity." You can also get an idea of what sites you visit frequently, broken down by time of day, and search across the full text of pages you've visited. "If you remember seeing something online, you'll be able to find it faster and from any computer with Web History. " What could possibly go wrong?
posted by jbickers on Apr 25, 2007 - 26 comments

Backrub was Google's predecessor. Ealier versions of Google. The original hardware, featuring the disk cabinet built of lego, now on display in the Gates building at Stanford University.
posted by PercussivePaul on Mar 23, 2007 - 18 comments

Vint Cerf, "father of the internet", joins Google! It seems Google is going from strength to strength. Not content with buying up the world's dark fibre, they've now wooed Vint Cerf to work for them as "Chief Internet Evangelist" (what a great job title!) Vint's interview is here, and information on his major cause: the need for more IPs!
posted by tommyc on Sep 9, 2005 - 24 comments

It looks like Google groups is finally out of beta. As well as the archive they bought from Deja, they have also added posts dating back to 1981. The timeline here demonstrates this feature, showing the first mentions of MS-DOS, AIDS, and Madonna on Usenet.
posted by viama on Dec 11, 2001 - 67 comments