Google Trends and Lexis/Nexis' missed opportunity

In case you haven't heard, there's a new automated content analysis tool (more specifically, computer-assisted text analysis, or CATA, as discussed here) on the Web called Google Trends. Type a term into the box, and you get two charts, one showing how often that term has been searched for in Google, and one showing how often that term has appeared in Google News. Enter two terms, and you get a side-by-side comparison, like this one, charting Harvard and Yale:
Harvard is on top, Yale on bottom (unfortunately, the colors are reversed). The letters point to events that might explain spikes, as described here. Unfortunately, the data only goes back two years, which probably coincides with the date some bright light at Google dreamed up this project.

After playing with Google Trends for a few minutes, I couldn't help but wonder why Reed Elsevier (owner of Lexis/Nexis) didn't create something like this five or ten years ago. A simple charting engine could really help academics, government users, and statisticians make sense out of all the data stored in its archives, and identify important trends. It could have also put Lexis/Nexis in a stronger position to compete against the likes of Google News and other aggregators which are surely eating Lexis/Nexis' lunch right now.

Instead, users have to deal with an interface that is barely an improvement over a command-line prompt. If they want charts, they need to manually enter the data themselves into Excel and use the chart wizard.

If I sound bitter, it's because I am! I spent the better part of the winter doing just that to analyze news content from the New China News Agency. Grrrr.