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[RedKing]

No, Google hasn't fallen under the dark sway of Scientology (those are engrams). This is a new feature that does a raw lexical analysis of all text contained within Google Books. Basically, give it a word or phrase, a language and a time period constraint, and it will show you the changing prevalence of that word or phrase over time in all the published works available in that language over that time frame.

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/

For more fun, you can do comma-seperated pairs (or even 3 or more) and compare the trends. Here's a few fun ones:

vampire vs. mummy: http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=vampire%2C+mummy&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3
(surprisingly, mummies have been way more popular [probably due to academic works in Egyptology] until the last couple of decades)

dwarf vs. fortress: http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=dwarf%2Cfortress&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3
(Nobody talkes much about the lowly dwarf. But they used to talk about the mighty fortress a lot more.)

Even better, at the bottom it will break each search term into a set of date ranges. If you click on those, it will show you works from that range with excertps of the text containing the term. Google has developed yet another tool to utterly paralyze data junkies.

[Cheeetar]

People used to talk about Arcadia a lot.

[Rilder]

Ninjas got nothing on Pirates

[Ricky]

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=Pirate%2CNinja%2Crobot%2Czombie%2Cvampire%2Cmummy%2Cdragon%2Celf%2Cdwarf&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3


the ultimate comparison

[AntiAntiMatter]

According to Ngrams...
http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=lol&year_start=1500&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3
"lol" was in frequent use in the late 17th century.


@ricky
As I thought, robots and dragons rule over all.

[ToonyMan]

Ninjas got nothing on Pirates

[malimbar04]

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=Pirate%2CNinja%2Crobot%2Czombie%2Cvampire%2Cmummy%2Cdragon%2Celf%2Cdwarf&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3


the ultimate comparison

robots are the new overlords! However, they're on the upswing, it won't last forever.

Dragons and dwarves are the blue-chips here, with by far the best record of the group.

[Heron TSG]

Check this out! AMERICA won in the end!

[Realmfighter]

Why would I do this

You think conspiracies now are bad? back in my day.....

I am now just putting in dirty words.

I need help.

[ein]

After noticing that quite distinct phallic shape of penis topping at somewhere near 1820, I am now searching for conspiracies about the subject that fall in that year.

Found it!
The top top falls at 1817.
In 1817, there was a typhus outbreak in Scotland.
Clearly, repetition of the word penis leads to incidents of typhus.

Right, case sensitive.
I guess that means 'Penis' leads to typhus, not 'penis.'

[Realmfighter]

HOLY GOD LOOK AT THAT LINE GO UP

HOLY SHIT I NEVER KNEW PEOPLE NEVER TALKED ABOUT THINGS UNTIL THEY EXIST.

Why are people talking about cellphones before they exist?

[Eugenitor]

Am I to believe that the use of the word "pwned" topped out around 1810?

[AntiAntiMatter]

Am I to believe that use of the word "Google" topped out around 1900?

[Megaman]

Huh

Edit: Even more Huh

[CoughDrop]

Isn't Urist interesting.

Compare these results for hilarity:
1 + 1 = ?