

Google Docs makes it easy to do market research - jasonkolb
https://plus.google.com/115195708001192408562/posts/BiGE3gwjDkB

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Adaptive
This is a _perfect_ example of Google's absolute failure at marketing
docs/apps.

If this had been rolled out as a feature in Apple Pages, we'd have seen it
demonstrated on stage, even if only for a moment, and given an easy to
remember name (Pages with "Cloud Complete", Pages with "Net Functions", etc.).
There would have been deserved oohs and ahhs. It would have been widely
reported on and helped ship units.

Google buries the lede and thus misses another great opportunity to show off a
really neat feature.

~~~
senthil_rajasek
May be this is intentional on Google's part.

I tried a few samples and the result was not always what the G+ Post suggests.

For example, I tried Nimitz, Independence, expecting the rest of the cells to
be filled with a few more US Navy Aircraft Carriers and the result was nowhere
close.

Advertising/Marketing a "feature" that does not work as intended is a far
worse scenario for Google than the current state.

~~~
pyoung
According to the buzzfeed article, the feature was pulled from a discontinued
project called Google Sets. So yeah, sounds like they had a cool feature built
that is no longer getting updated and they decided to toss it in to google
docs.

[http://www.buzzfeed.com/justinesharrock/a-glimpse-into-
googl...](http://www.buzzfeed.com/justinesharrock/a-glimpse-into-googles-
brain-hidden-in-a-spreadsheet-app)

I personally think this is awesome.

EDIT: ahh, sorry. Just saw the other comment that points out Google Sets.
Anyway, this is really cool, playing around with it now, when I should be
working.

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fdb
This is based on the now defunct Google Sets, a Google labs experiment. It
looks at ordered and unordered lists in HTML to find related items.

Here's the official blog post covering this:
[http://googlesystem.blogspot.be/2012/11/google-sets-still-
av...](http://googlesystem.blogspot.be/2012/11/google-sets-still-
available.html)

~~~
andybons
Actually, I implemented the feature and it was first launched in 2007 –
[http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/09/google-
spreadsheets...](http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/09/google-spreadsheets-
lets-you-import.html)

And Google Operating System isn't an official blog of Google :)

~~~
essayist
So my guess is that (a) the Google Sets feature is discontinued, much to the
dismay of the implementing team, (b) they (you?) see a lifeboat in putting
this into Google Docs. It's way better there than deep-sixed entirely, but
Google Sets was pretty useful to me as a standalone tool - cleaner UI for the
capability.

~~~
andybons
FYI, I don't work for Google anymore.

They shut down the consumer frontend to Google Sets but there are clearly
internal instances still running to power this feature (it may also be used in
coming up with related terms in another ad tech product, but I'm not sure).

I was new to the Google Spreadsheets team back in 2007 and autofill was a
feature that had not been implemented yet. We thought it would be a cool thing
to make it a bit better by adding Sets support, so I worked with Simon
Tong—the author of Google Sets—to get it playing nice with autofill. To be
clear, I did not write Sets. Simon did.

This feature has been live since 2007. It was not created to be a lifeboat for
Sets and the frontend getting shut down is the result of (my guess) low user
traffic.

~~~
kposehn
Google Sets was one of the best paid-search marketing tools ever.

Thank you for helping keep it alive in some form!

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tvladeck
This doesn't work for me. I tried putting "chianti" and "merlot" in just like
the little video, and after dragging across the cells I just got "chianti" and
"merlot" repeating.

~~~
tvladeck
ok - my bad. you have to hold down the ctrl/command key when you are dragging.

~~~
nkoren
Only appears to work on Windows. Haven't found any way to trigger it on OSX.

Edit: it's alt on the Mac

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lukeasrodgers
My first thought was: will this work with Borges' "Celestial Emporium of
Benevolent Knowledge" taxonomy? It (mostly) does.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_Emporium_of_Benevolen...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_Emporium_of_Benevolent_Knowledges_Taxonomy)

~~~
hnriot
you meant:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_Emporium_of_Benevolen...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_Emporium_of_Benevolent_Knowledges_Taxonomy)

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yalogin
This works great. I am currently looking to get a small DB of related keywords
and just beginning to think about how to get them. This is awesome. It needs
two cells to get some context. One cell does not work and should be expected.

On a slightly related note, what do people usually do if they want a list of
all say, manufacturers of Sunglasses? I usually am way behind the web server
in C and recently dabbling into the JS and python world.

~~~
netrus
I can only speak about Germany, but there still are tons of catalogs,
registers and databases (both in print and online), listing companies that
supply specific goods. I am not sure about the US equivalent of Handelskammern
or Chambre de Commerce.

~~~
mindcrime
Here in the US, a place like hoovers.com would be a good starting point for
that sort of thing. There's probably also something like the "Sunglass
Manufacturer's Industry Association" which probably maintains such a list.
There are also government databases of various sorts, and things like the
Chamber of Commerce, etc.

~~~
yalogin
I used the Sunglass manufacturers as an example. Did not mean that literally.
I was asking for a more general approach to get lists of related things,
exactly like Google sets. Did not know it existed while it did.

~~~
mindcrime
Right, I was also just using that as an example. You could substitute the
"Sunglass Manufacturer's Industry Association" for the "Mechanical Pencil
Industry Association" or the "Nuclear Fuel Rod Manufacturing Association" or
whatever. :-)

In either case, the point about Hoovers, various government databases, etc.,
still stands.

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josephjrobison
This is pretty awesome - I would use it for very quick brainstorming to get
the ball rolling since it's not extremely accurate, but still useful for ten
words!

For more keyword suggestions I like ubersuggest.org a lot.

~~~
ianfernz
Thank you for this link, I had never heard of them!

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indignado
I'm a musician so I immediately started typing in a variety of band names and
genres. After a few experiments I started to figure out ideal associations.
Cool way to discover/rediscover related bands...

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thecombjelly
I wonder how well the terms correlate with regards to search traffic. I often
build up a list of search terms in the google adwords tool and see the traffic
estimates for them and related keywords for evaluating niche markets.

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danso
Cool trick!

I thought maybe this would be a good way to generate a list of fifty states
(without having to find a random page that has a straight-up list) and so I
started out by typing:

    
    
       Alabama
       Delaware
       Connecticut
       Iowa
    

And dragged down, however, it only found me roughly 20 more states. I guess
there must be a limitation of the query interface...i.e. "find related items,
limit 20", rather than: "This user is looking for all 50 state names, so
autofill"

\--

edit: And for the hell of it, I entered three of George Carlin's seven dirty
words and it only returned a fourth (and a few other non-canonical-dirty-
words)

~~~
jakerocheleau
This is off topic but I absolutely love George Carlin. Very smart guy and well
before his time. Just went back and listened to his seven words bit, still
just as hilarious.

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JacobIrwin
Is there an app or API out there that does something similar... yet...?

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brianbreslin
these sets are "interesting" to say the least. I tried it out putting "blonde,
brunette" figuring it would give me hair colors.... I figured wrong.

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tantalor
Previously discussed at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4764169>

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coderhs
Awesome.. would save a good amount of time.. :D

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nileshbhojani
With the accuracy of data questionable and the universe of data undefined, at
best this is entertaining :-)

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jon_c
cf. related patent
[http://www.google.com/patents/US7350187?printsec=abstract#v=...](http://www.google.com/patents/US7350187?printsec=abstract#v=onepage&q&f=false)

~~~
swah
W/ Jeff Dean cameo!

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SirPulse
Should be useful when playing family feud. ;)

