In September of 2007, Google research scientists Bill Schilit and Okan Kolak announced a new feature for Google Book Search which they called Popular Passages. The announcement came in an Inside Google Book Search blog post titled Dive into the meme pool with Google Book Search
Popular Passages provides us with the ability to find connections between books by taking interesting quotations or passages from one book or magazine or publication, and showing where those appear in other literary works. For example, the following passage shows up the book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game:
As thus: lately in a wreck of a Californian ship, one of the passengers fastened a belt about him with two hundred pounds of gold in it, with which he was found afterwards at the bottom. Now, as he was sinking — had he the gold? or had the gold him?
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