We’re continuing our exploration of the Google Help Center. We’ll call it “Here’s another of the things you didn’t know Google could do.” Let’s lay this out - perhaps you had a world almanac at some point in your school career. It was likely to be a chunky book full of maps, facts, and figures. It was useful in many ways, but one morning you woke up to find it useless. Why? Because a revolution, coup, or invasion made it outdated. One huge example was the breakup of the U.S.S.R.

Well, Google is standing by to help you out. You no longer have to worry about who did what to whom while you were sleeping. Google has a neat little search tool callled Q&A.

Q&A will dig up all the things you might want to know about places on the map. Here’s its official example. I don’t think I could illustrate it any better.

Q&A

Want to know the population of Japan? What currency is used in Algeria? The birthplace of Bono? Hit us with a fact-based question or query (like “population of Japan”) by typing it into the Google search box. We’ll search the web and display the answer at the top of your search results page. We also link to our source for this information so that you can learn even more.

Coupled with the new Google Map Service, it can become the only almanac you ever need.