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What We Ask Google

bySimon Rogers

A surprisingly hopeful picture of humankind

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Ever wondered what goes through other people’s minds – their silly questions, their inner anxieties, hopes and dreams?

In What We Ask Google, the company's Data Editor Simon Rogers explores insights from the world's biggest dataset: an epic snapshot, two decades long and counting, of our collective brain. What it reveals about us might surprise you.
  • In June the UK sees a spike in searches for ‘how to help a bee’
  • 'Where is Chuck Norris?' is the 17th most common English language question of all time
  • Around the world, it’s 2am when parents want to know how to get their baby to sleep
  • Reassuringly, people consistently want to know, ‘How often can you donate plasma?’
Brimming with insights that vary from the playful to the profound, What We Ask Google delves into the momentous and the mundane secrets of what we ask when we get the chance to ask anything, offering a surprisingly hopeful picture of humankind.

'This view from the other side of the search box is both charming and insightful, tapping into a deep well of curiosity.' Tim Harford, author of How to Make the World Add Up

© Simon Rogers 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026

This view from the other side of the search box is both charming and insightful, tapping into a deep well of curiosity.

Tim Harford, author of How to Make the World Add Up

About Simon Rogers

Simon Rogers is Google’s Data Editor, leading a team of data journalists, analysts, and visualisers to tell stories with Google’s data. Previously, he was Twitter’s first ever Data Editor, and he is also the author of Facts Are Sacred (2013, Faber & Faber), based on the Guardian’s Datablog which he helped launch. A lecturer in Data Journalism at Medill-Northwestern University in San Francisco, he has received the Royal Statistical Society’s award for statistical excellence in journalism and been named Best UK Internet Journalist by the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford.
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