Public Data Explorer has escaped the cull at Google Labs, from which it  has now “graduated”. There were signs that it might survive when Google started adding public data charts to the top of the results for some statistics searches. It can now be found at  http://www.google.com/publicdata/home. Public Data Explorer allows you to search and compare sets of public data such as population, energy consumption, mobile phone usage and government debt across countries. You can select the countries or states that you wish to compare and view the data as line graphs, bar charts, map visualizations or bubble charts.

Data sets include information from the OECD, World Bank, Eurostat and various US government departments. There is also an option to upload your own data sets – details are at http://www.google.com/publicdata/admin. This probably accounts for some of the very specific data that is now available,  for example: Australian Population Estimates, Unemployment rate Italy and Catalan municipalities indicators. The full list is at http://www.google.com/publicdata/directory. It is worth exploring the more generic titles such as “World Bank, World Development Indicators” and “OECD Factbook 2010” to uncover the full range of what is available.