In "What We Ask Google," Simon Rogers explores insights from the world’s biggest dataset: an epic snapshot, two decades long and counting, of our collective brain. What it reveals about us might surprise you. Every June, for instance, the world sees a spike in searches for “How to help a bee.” Reassuringly, people consistently want to know, “Where to donate blood?” after natural disasters.
From the current top 20 searches of all time (How to tie a tie?), to the calendar and clock to our searches (at 2am, a mass of searches all containing the words “baby” and “sleep), "What We Ask Google" delves into the momentous and the mundane secrets of what we ask when we get the chance to ask anything, offering a surprisingly hopeful picture of humankind.
Simon Rogers is Google’s data editor, leading a team of data journalists, analysts, and visualizers to tell stories with Google’s data. Previously, he was Twitter’s first ever data editor, and he is also the author of "Facts Are Sacred," based on the Guardian’s Datablog which he helped launch. A lecturer in Data Journalism at Medill-Northwestern University in San Francisco, he has received the Royal Statistical Society’s award for statistical excellence in journalism. He lives with this family in San Francisco.
