Digging for Public Data

Google announced yesterday that they are making a small subset of public databases searchable. This is an obvious move for Google as they continue their efforts to make all the data in the world searchable, but it's interesting nonetheless. If you search for unemployment rate, for example, you'll be given a chart with the current unemployment rate of the United States. You can tick boxes to compare states, cities, or counties.

Initially, Google plans to make available U.S. population and unemployment data from the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, respectively. Other data sets, such as emissions statistics from the Environmental Protection Agency, will roll out in the coming months.

This certainly fits in with Web 3.0 (Semantic Web) technologies, but it also does something else. Just like blogging democratized publishing, indexing public data sets will enable anyone to cross reference and visualize information. As Stewart Brand said, "Information wants to be free."