Google Etymology

So a while ago I read The Professor and the Madman, about the Oxford English Dictionary (which apparently Helen craves). If you're not familiar with the OED, perhaps its signature feature is its inclusion of early uses of lots of words. My understanding is that they don't always go for the earliest use, but they do try to include early uses to illustrate the emergence of the word. Very often the earliest known use is included.

Anyway, the book explains how the process once worked. Amateurs like "the Madman" (Dr. William Chester Minor) would scour through old books, looking for early uses of words. They would fill out slips of paper including the passage, the publication, etc. and send the slips in to the OED people. I don't think they were paid for their services.

Anyway, it seems to me that this sort of thing could work much better today. Google should start a service called Google Etymology that allows you to search for the first use of a particular word. For works that haven't been digitized, it could include a wiki to allow people to submit early uses. After all, the process described in The Professor and the Madman seems pretty similar to the Wikipedia model, except on a much smaller scale.

After doing some research, I see that this is already happening with something they call BBC Wordhunt. Very well, but I think there's room for a Google version, which would reach a larger audience, enlist more volunteers, and presumably have better features.