Google 2010 Zeitgeist | Hacker News Reader

Google 2010 Zeitgeist

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64 pointsjoubert31 comments

I don't understand how Katy Perry can be on the general fastest rising list, but not on the entertainment fastest rising list? Is this a judgement on Google's part that she isn't entertaining?

A plausible (if not likely) explanation is that a large number of the searches for Katy Perry included other terms that caused Google to identify the searches as "not entertainment".

Depends on whose entertainment we're talking about I suppose.

The world is not flat, but it is shallow.

Off topic, but everytime I run across a Google site that I haven't seen before I can't help but marvel at the beautiful simplicity of its design.

Combine that with the knowledge that Google A/B tests designs constantly, and it makes you realize how important a simple design must really be.

> Fastest falling: 8. myspace layouts

So long myspace, we hardly knew you...

Google has certainly upped the ante on its design efforts, everything they've been releasing lately looks beautiful

So does pornography not count as entertainment? I'm surprised not to see porn represented on this page at all.

I wonder what else Google filters out of their lists.

Although, thinking about this a little more, perhaps they look at spikes in search data that represent "changes in mood", and filter out things that represent a constant "hum".

>I'm surprised not to see porn represented on this page at all.

I'm surprised that you're surprised. You expect Google, in what amounts to a press release, to direct people to pornography sites?

So you're assuming Google is editing out the porn sites. I was assuming porn sites legitimately didn't make the page, and I was surprised by that.

They filter out pretty much anything that has to do with sex, whether it's removal from Suggest or disabling instant search ("Press Enter to search").

It's hardly surprising that Google would remove it from these lists.

maybe, is it time for creating pornoogle.com?

I could see porn sites not legitimately making that page. First of all the categories are nearly all "Fastest Rising", you can easily imagine porn queries being less volatile. Also, despite porn's popularity, there are basically no porn stars famous enough to pull the same number of queries as a Katy Perry or a Shakira.

If "nicki minaj" is directly under "justin bieber" in fastest rising, why is there a bunch of other stuff between those terms in "fastest rising in entertainment"?

In video review form http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0QXB5pw2qE

Nice charts. They seem to be fancier then what they provide in the visualization API. http://code.google.com/apis/visualization/documentation/gall...

It would be nice if they shared more of what they used internally.

Give them time. I thought that about the Google Finance charts, which are now a part of the visualization API, but they weren't for quite some time.

  Fastest Rising Translations:

  5. beijing apartments

This is something I've noticed recently: Moving to China is something that is becoming a much more popular among Americans.

I'm surprised. Considering most of what I hear about China is in relation to their government/censorship and manufacturing, what makes it an attractive place to move to? I understand they're rising in educational prominence (there was a story about that here recently even), but wouldn't the lack of freedom of speech and press be a turn off? I don't mean this as a diss to China, I seriously don't understand.

I prefer this interface http://www.google.com/insights/search/#

Interesting how South America seemed to care more about the ash cloud over Iceland (which I guess effected travel internationally, so it was an important thing) more than the gulf oil spill (which was popular even in Asia).

But there's always funny little quirks in data you'll find like that. Trying to draw too much from them will drive you mad.

Interesting to compare product searches to actual sales data (we've been looking at this with a client: http://blog.reevoo.com/2010/12/datamining-santas-grotto-pred...).

[Starts digging around in Excel...].

Could somebody from Russia explain this "как жрать суши" (Translation: "How to eat sushi?")? Why it is fastest rising?

Seems like a meme: people encourage others to google for "как жрать суши" and look at the first link. The first link reads "Stop eating sushi, dumbass -- eat borsch and don't show off".

Yes, there are Russian. This is not a pure meme in his understanding. foundation here - that the word "жрать". There are three common words used in respect of the word is - жрать (Russian profanity) есть (general use) and кушать (cultural variant). As anything anywhere using the profanity (from cleaners to politicians) the meme is not here, this expression for sushi can be heard quite often. I don't know if there are any country in the world, in which the mprofanity is so often used in everyday life.

Why don't they translate the foriegn words? And is this supposed to be worldwide? Am I to understand the most popular search terms across the world are in three languages and amost all englsih? If it's not worldwide report why include the foreign terms?

Someone really dropped the ball on this one.

It's interesting.

Normally one would say that visualizing the data would increase it's legibility and ability to interpret it.

With this I actually feel that the most interesting and understandable thing is the listing

Wait a minute WikiLeaks isn't there..! ;)

Using which tool was the video made ? Can it me made with Google's Cloud tool ?

Fastest falling: Wamu -- LOL.

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