Inspired by this Reddit gem, programmer Rory McCann created the Google Suggest Venn Diagram Generator, which generates a Venn diagram based on Google’s suggestions to complete a phrase.
Here’s how it works: In the “base query” section, you write some snippet containing “X”; the example above uses “why is X so”… Then, you pick three Xes: In the above case, “America,” “England,” and “Canada.” (h/t 3pt14159). Hit “update” and the generator will spit out a Venn diagram for you, complete with points of twofold and threefold overlap. Some Google queriers evidently think that both England and Canada are boring, cold, or expensive, but some also think that England, Canada, and America are great.
Banging around on the thing a little bit, it seems like the best way to get interesting results is to pick broad topics and questions, but not make them too broad: Obscure Xes will leave you with a lot of blanks, but if you write something too simple like “X is” in the base query section, you’ll get an awful lot of weird suggestions, since the Venn diagram might use “is” to start a longer word. As an example, when I searched “X is,” setting X to Twitter, one of my results was “iah Mustafa.” The Old Spice man would be proud.
Click here to give it a whirl; if you need some inspiration, look no further than these Hacker News suggestions: (thanks to the Unofficial Google OS blog for coming up with the most logical notation for writing these down.)
*How do I tell my {wife, girlfriend, boyfriend}…
*My {friend, wife, husband} is addicted to…
*Why is {Facebook, Twitter, sex} so…
*How is {fat, ugly, stupid} is… (wait till you see the point of overlap.)
(Google Suggest Venn Diagram Generator via Google OS, Hacker News)
