I spy: When you googled what did you search for?

Dec 16, 2010 | Sandhya Srinivasan | DigiTechEra

As another eventful year draws to an end, I saw the world becoming larger, crazier, more inquisitive, arrogant, aggressive, meaner and what not. It just expanded to include so much more and honestly I speak for myself when I say that I am awe-somed by the deluge of what is in store. I suppose much of the world’s populi is trying to simplifying things. Carefully wrapped in bookmarks, sharing select links and so on. Google search is one such thing. And ‘keyword search’ makes it so simple, that the word complexity needs to drop out of the dictionary.

Presenting google’s take on what the biggest thing in search in 2010. It’s cool really. Events happen. A context is created and people simply google that. If this isn’t the wave of homogeneity, I’m afraid I cannot hazard a guess to decode what could be.

Google Zeitgeist: 2010

Nice wasn’t it. I was curious enough have a look at India’s scorecard in the last year. So I did a similar search. I was a mite surprised & must add, disappointed, to see very basic keywords that made it to the list. Atleast from the search all I could conclude was that we are still coming to terms with the internet. It is just for a niche probably, a source of knowledge.

I compared the same across a few countries and what stood out was the addiction with social networks. Except for the UK & Japan which seemed to show a high run on bbc & wiki respectively most others had the usual suspects i.e. google, youtube etc. featured. And in this new price-conscious Europe I saw big runs on ebay & classifieds like craiglist & leboncoin.fr (also an auction site). I did of course also notice that the rising searches showcased some cool stuff that had grown disproportionately like iPad/iPhone, justin bieber (ahem) and sport (fifa/World cup). Here it is:

I was utterly happy though that in the midst of the above the most democratic and utilitarian keyword of them all was IRCTC (Indian Railway Catering & Tourism Corporation). Isn’t it obvious then that a well created system, which can ease life always finds plenty of takers? Kudos to the Railways & yes the Government.

I like this feeling. It’s the feeling of hope. Am looking forward to the next decade. 2012 and the Mayan prophecy notwithstanding, I think we are poised for a change. A good one that will uplift. One that will take the ‘pleasure’ spheres and add on the ‘practical’ ones. And I wonder how many more googles.