I’ve been playing around with the various experiments in Google Labs for a few months now, and there’s one I’ve really grown to like: Google Public Data Explorer. It’s a site that makes it super easy to visualize and use statistical data. Honestly, it’s the kind of tool I would’ve killed for back in university when I had to spend entire days at the library digging through outdated datasets. So what makes Public Data Explorer so compelling?

First big plus: free access to a ton of up-to-date information. High-quality stats aren’t just for academics or pros with pricey data subscriptions anymore. Here’s a list of current sources (pulled from the Official Google Blog):

(…) the World Bank, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau. (…) the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), the California Department of Education, Eurostat, the U.S. Center for Disease Control, and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.

But having access to all this data only matters if you can actually visualize and share it easily. That’s probably one of the biggest strengths of Public Data Explorer: offering slick and flexible visualizations (from basic bar charts to animated world map projections). Plus, you can track how the data evolves over time. A little “Play” button lets you watch the progression like a video.

And like most Google tools, there are different ways to share or embed those visualizations. Super handy if you want to drop a map or chart into a blog post, a forum, or a team workspace. Public Data Explorer is built on Trendalyzer tech, and the APIs used are freely available here and here. These tools are powerful, convenient, and pretty easy to get into.

Now, even though Public Data Explorer is solid and accessible, it’s still missing a few features. For one, it’d be way more useful if you could export data and visualizations (to Excel, XML, PDF, SWF, etc.). Apparently, that feature’s in the works. Also, being able to merge different datasets—kind of like a pivot table—would be a big win. And adding some collaborative features (annotations, comments, that kind of thing) would make it easier for students or teams to work together on shared data projects.

Fingers crossed Google keeps building on this and adds more data and features in the coming months. Definitely a cool project to keep an eye on!