Trendalyzer was a tool for building animations of different information such as statistics, facts, and figures. It was developed by Hans Rosling's Gapminder Foundation in Sweden.
The tool utilized bubbles in different colors, displayed on the X and Y axes, and adding time as a variable. It presented an entertaining way of viewing all kinds of data.
Google acquired Trendalyzer in 2007 and this is what they announced on their blog:
“Like Google, Gapminder strives to make information more useful, and Trendalyzer will improve any function or application in which data might be better visualized.”
And also:
“Gathering data and creating useful statistics is an arduous job that often goes unrecognized. We hope to provide the resources necessary to bring such work to its deserved wider audience by improving and expanding Trendalyzer and making it freely available to any and all users capable of thinking outside the X and Y axes.”
It wasn’t clear at the start which specific Google products were the Trendalyzer technology supposed to improve. A promising candidate was the Google Analytics project. Trendalyzer’s way of presenting information could help website owners more easily understand how well their pages did during searches.
Google used the technology to create Motion Charts, which allowed users to make charts from their data, and a public data search function that made it easier to find public data in a normal Google search. It was also widely used in the Google Public Data Explorer.
Officially Trendalyzer was discontinued in 2017. Google didn’t provide a reason for the decision, but it seems there was no longer a need for a separated tool.
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