The  blogger gives detailed instructions on how to extract a table containing population data from England using the Google spreadsheet function. He then uses Yahoo! pipes to geocode the data and create a Google mashup. It’s a very ingenious method of extracting limited datasets!

Another blogger, GoogleMapsMania, suggested using Batchgeocode to get the latitude and longitudinal data and then applying that data in the Google Spreadsheet Map Wizard to map out the data

Google was originally planning to host Terabytes of data, including astronomical and large governmental data sets. Many bloggers had been hailing Google’s service as the start of a new era of transparency for the USA.

The decision to cancel Google’s Palimpset came just a week ago. The sharp downturn in the economy played a key role. Google’s stock fell from an all-time high of about $700 a year ago to around $300 today. This caused Google to sharply curtail “experimental” programs that have no guaranteed revenues.