Slashdot Mirror
Google Zeitgeist 2008
bahstid writes "As the year comes to a close, it's time to look at the big events, memorable moments and emerging trends that captivated us in 2008. As it happens, studying the aggregation of the billions of search queries that people type into the Google search box gives us a glimpse into the zeitgeist — the spirit of the times. While the global aggregated results are what one might expect, the breakdown by country is filled with 'hotmail,' 'yahoo' and 'facebook,' indicating that in 2008 your average user still hasn't quite grasped this address bar thing."
This year's focus on the US presidential election and the economic crisis made for some interesting trends. It also seems that many Americans frequently checked their Facebook profile while watching American Idol and wondering who Sarah Palin was.
or type the first letter and the rest of the word shows up, then arrow down and enter... 3 "characters". I love been lazy
Ah yes, the distant cousin of Santa Clausa.
-- http://ninthagenda.com/
And everyone else wants to learn to play guitar, learn english, create a website, make money and kiss (in no particular order).
You use Google to find Yahoo? "Yo dawg, I heard you like searching so I put a search engine in your search engine so you can search while you search."
I'm not American, you insensitive clod! The first time I heard about Sarah Palin was in a spam email, and I still think Jenna's more talented...
Please mod this comment to minus a billion where it belongs.
More than happy to help!
... oops.
Sadly my boss still types full site urls into the text input box on google... trying to convince him to use the address bar has repeatedly failed.
You can't take the sky from me.
Most people arguing on the internet cite wikipedia so democratically they are correct and you are wrong.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
where is pr0n?
And it's sort of reassuring that a misspelling makes one of the UK top 10s. ("Eaton Mess" should be "Eton Mess")
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Actually, I've seen worse than this. I was at this bar attached to a hotel in Switzerland and they had a coin-operated Windoze machine. And old American guy (~70s) felt hip enough to surf the tubes, so he put in his coins, and upon login an IE browser window automatically popped up, full screen. My friend and I painfully watched him spend 10 minutes trying to find IE by going to Google and searching for "Internet Explorer". He even tried to download from one site and install it; when that didn't work he had to drag the bartender over and show him how to use this new-fangled device (bartender/IT? quite a CV).
Once he was on, he spent his time checking hotmail and his bank and stock accounts. But he was mindful of the security risks: when he was typing in passwords, he looked over his shoulder to make sure no one was watching.
Actually, once you've typed 'putty' into google, there's no need to subsequently type 'www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html'
</nazi>
So can you explain the great anal fisting surge of 2006 ?
Annoying Squatter. What you need when you need it.
I make fun of my friend regularly for googling things that are in his search bar search engines list.
he also googled google maps.
i'm sure that works easier with peepz with only one arm, also.