500 billion words analysed
23 February, 2011
Researchers from Google, Harvard and Encyclopedia Britannica just finished a four-year project, analysing over five million books (four per cent of all books ever published). The “digital fossil record,” as they call it, contains over half a trillion words in seven languages.
One of the findings: In just 100 years, the English language doubled in size, from 544,000 words in 1900, to 1,022,000 in 2000. (Could that explain why your grandparents seemed to talk less than you?)
For more fascinating facts about your culture, check out the full story.
Someone needs to slow down Google, they are becoming all too powerful on the web. Microsoft always used to get into trouble when will Google is the question?