Google has a new service tacked onto its basic search that does excellent comparative data searches of certain public data. I’m still playing with it, but this search, comparing population growth in NH, Vermont and Maine, showed an interesting fact that I had missed - New Hampshire has virtually caught up with its bigger neighbor to the east:

Speaking as somebody who tries to display data on our own Web site, I have to doff my cap in silent appreciation of what Google has done here. It’s just a beautiful job in allowing on-the-fly comparison of things like unemployment rates and population.

Tags: Google, graphing, population, trends