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Alas, no, I don’t know of a replacement for ngram! But personally I don’t mind ngram at all — my objection to using Google search is not really that it’s a google product (with all the problems of monopoly that accrue from Google’s monopolistic-ish position, and the bad downstream effects that flow from that, say) but that the UI design is, for me, totally wretched and a hassle. I’m lazy; if they made a better UI I’d probably go back to using them as my main!

Ngram, in contrast, is beautifully made — a nice, simple, single-purpose tool that’s clear about what it’s doing and how it’s doing it; which is, alas, what Google Search used to be

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Clive Thompson
Clive Thompson

Written by Clive Thompson

I write 2X a week on tech, science, culture — and how those collide. Writer at NYT mag/Wired; author, “Coders”. @clive@saturation.social clive@clivethompson.net

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