2004 Year-End Google Zeitgeist

krgallagher writes "Google has published their Year-End Zeitgeist. In their own words, 'Based on billions of searches conducted by Google users around the world, the 2004 Year-End Zeitgeist offers a unique perspective on the year's major events and trends. We hope you enjoy this aggregate look at what people wanted to know more about this year.' The number one search for all of 2004 is britney spears."

SCO

[flatface]

Heh, it's ... nice to see SCO as the top searched-for company. I guess it pays to be in that position, but we're gonna have to wait and see if it changes anything. [slashdot.org]

Re:please explain?

[caerwyn]

google.com queries at the top are separated from the news.google.com queries (next section down), and the results for the two are different.

Re:Browser information

[file cabinet]

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/18/222210 &tid=217&tid=1 [slashdot.org]

Re:zeitgeist?

[Anonymous Coward]

But Zeitgeist does not mean "summary".

Re:Browser information

[fred_sanford]

They used to report on those statistics but stopped after the news sites started quoting them as official sources.

Re:cricket?

[spisska]

The rules of cricket are actually quite simple, and deftly explained here. [britainexpress.com]

The Rules of Cricket as Explained to a foreign visitor

You have two sides, one out in the field and one in.

Each man that's in the side that's in, goes out, and when he's out, he comes in and the next man goes in until he's out.

When they are all out the side that's out comes in and the side that's been in goes out and tries to get those coming in out.

Sometimes you get men still in and not out.

When both sides have been in and out including the not-outs, that's the end of the game.

This description of the game is remarkably accurate.

Re:cricket?

[cliveholloway]

Would it surprise you to find that New England has about half the number of internet users as India?

Population of New England [economagic.com]: 14,205,480 (2003)

Indian internet users [64.233.161.104]: 18,500,000 (2004)

So, assuming 65-70% of New England population use the internet, New England has roughly 9 million internet users.

And Indian access is growing at a very resonable rate. I see no reason why it won't hit 50,000,000 by 2006.

Add to that the country's obsession with cricket, and it's understandable - imagine the fan bases of football, basketball, baseball and the WWE all following the same team and it will give you an idea of the scale of the following of the the Indian Cricket Team.

cLive ;-)

Re:Interesting...NOT!

[isomeme]

I am begining to believe Asimov's 'The Marching Morons' is, in fact nonfiction...

Not Asimov, but rather C. M. Kornbluth [hycyber.com]. Quite a scary story.

Re:zeitgeist?

[Anarkee]

From google:

Zeitgeist Explained
The term "zeitgeist" comes from the German "Zeit" meaning "time" and "Geist" meaning "spirit". The term is defined in English by Merriam-Webster's Collegiate® Dictionary as "the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era." Google believes that this word and its definition appropriate to describe the program it implemented to share global search statistics and trends from the world's most popular search engine.

That's from this page [google.com]

Re:cricket?

[mwigmani]

Most non-US residents don't understand that "World Series" is a reference to the newspaper that sponsored the series not a claim to world domination.

Not according to this:

A persistent myth is that the "World" in "World Series" came about because the New York World newspaper sponsored it. Baseball researcher Doug Pappas refutes that claim, demonstrating a linear progression from the phrase "World's Championship Series" (used to describe the 1903 series) to "World's Series" to "World Series". Furthermore, investigation of the New York World for the relevant years revealed no evidence of the supposed sponsorship. (For details, see Mr. Pappas's web page on the subject (http://roadsidephotos.com/baseball/name.htm)).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_series [wikipedia.org]