A Glimpse Into Google's Brain, Hidden In A Spreadsheet App [BuzzFeed]

Check the full post for some examples of Google and the joy of sets; while the source Google Labs project was terminated, I suspect the Google Knowledge Graph will eventually serve as a similar set source

""Someone at Google really likes beer," the post said, implying that the categories were created by Google employees. Turns out, the lists are pulled from Google's search database using an algorithm that creates sets, or categories, of common words and names. It's essentially Google-powered word association — not a window into the world of Google engineers, but into the internet's collective view of how things are related to one another.
It doesn't work just for beer, car brands, colors, states, and websites, as reported, but just about any category you can think of. The feature was an outgrowth of a discontinued Google Labs project called Google Sets, so it's no longer pulling real-time information."

A Glimpse Into Google's Brain, Hidden In A Spreadsheet App