Do you remember that Google was offering large hard disks and N-grams? It was in 2006: http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2006/08/all-our-n-gram-are-belong-to-you.html

""Dear Google Research Datasets user,
[...]
As you know, Google is a company that promotes experimentation with innovative new products and services. At the same time, we have to carefully balance that with ensuring that our resources are used in the most effective possible way to bring maximum value to our users.

It has been a difficult decision, but we have decided not to continue work on Google Research Datasets, [...]

The Google Research Datasets service will remain active until the end of January 2009 during which time any datasets may be downloaded.
[...]
"

via http://blog.albertoconti.com/2008/12/so-long-google-research-datasets.html
and http://sciences.blog.lemonde.fr/2008/12/20/google-research-datasets-un-projet-mort-ne/

I asked Google about this and they told me the Google Research Datasets cancellation actually has no effect on the n-gram project...

I bet Google gives away the n-grams, but uses a set of (n+1)-grams internally to pick up on any splogs using the n-grams to automatically generate content.

Let's think about next Google service to be canceled, and how Google will make up excuses.

Boo! Hiss! This was one of their nifty public service projects. I don't hate them for it but I hope this is one they bring back. I always thought it would be awesome if you could import data into Google App Engine and crunch it there.

Oh well, at least Amazon is still moving forward with their scientific data repository.

In a (related?) note, Google.org has terminated the Fuel the Growth of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises Initiative:
http://blog.google.org/2008/12/sharpening-our-focus-in-global.html

Amazon has a similar service – research data sets – setup since a few weeks: http://aws.amazon.com/publicdatasets/

Ok, I would like to download these datasets. Can someone point me to the URL please?