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What We Ask Google: A Surprisingly Hopeful History of Humankind

by Simon Rogers

A social history told through search questions

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AlbakiReads Editorial

A social history told through search questions

Simon Rogers uses two decades of Google searches as a record of everyday concerns, curiosities, and responses to major events. Examples range from seasonal questions about helping bees to searches about blood donation after disasters, placing small routines alongside moments of collective concern. The book treats these queries as clues to both differences between communities and shared human experiences, including parents’ late-night searches about getting a baby to sleep. Its subject is not only what people want to know, but what a vast, changing archive of questions can suggest about the concerns people bring to the search box.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • For readers interested in social history and everyday behavior.
  • For those curious about how search data can illuminate shared concerns across communities.
  • For readers who enjoy nonfiction that connects ordinary questions with broader patterns.

Themes

Search data and collective behaviorEveryday curiosityShared human concernsResponses to natural disasters

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

Ever wondered what goes through other people's minds--their silly questions, their inner anxieties, hopes, and dreams?

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. And despite superficial differences (such as the deeply divided world map of cat people vs. dog people), humanity has a lot more in common than we often acknowledge. After all, everywhere around the world, it's two a.m. when parents want to know how to get their baby to sleep.

Brimming with insights that vary from the playful to the profound, 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.
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