World
Google turns 25: A look at the world’s top performing searches
Al Jazeera visualises the most popular global search terms as the world’s top search engine turns 25.
Google turns 25 on Monday.
The world’s most popular search engine started as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were both doctoral students at Stanford University in the late 1990s.
Working from their dorm rooms, the two developed a new algorithm for search engines that ranked websites based on the number of other websites that linked to them, which they called PageRank. This algorithm proved to be much more effective than the existing algorithms, and Google quickly became the most popular search engine on the web.
As of last month, Google had a global market share of about 92 percent. Its nearest competitor, Bing, held about 3 percent market share, followed by Yahoo at just over 1 percent.
Google’s name is derived from the mathematical term “googol”, which refers to the number 1 followed by 100 zeros. The choice of this name reflects the founders’ intention to organise large amounts of information.
Through the years, the Google Search engine has become an integral part of our daily lives, shaping the way we search, communicate and interact with information online.
In 2006, the Oxford Dictionary added the word “google” as a verb to refer to searching for information on the internet, regardless of the search engine used.
That same year, Google launched Google Trends, an online platform that provides a window into the trillions of searches the world googles each year. At the end of each year, Google releases its “Year in Search”, which summarises the biggest events, personalities and trends that captured the world’s attention that year.
Al Jazeera compiled all these reports and visualised the top five global search terms from 2003 to 2022.
What were the most searched categories?
To get a better picture of which categories these 100 search terms fit into, we grouped them into six categories:
- Person, celebrity, politician (38 appearances)
- Technology products (27 appearances)
- Sports event (15 appearances)
- Disaster, accident (eight appearances)
- Movie, TV show, song (seven appearances)
- Other (five appearances)
The most popular searched category was that of people, celebrities or politicians with 38 percent of all appearances. Among these results were Britney Spears, Michael Jackson, Nelson Mandela, Donald Trump and Queen Elizabeth II.
Technology products appeared second most with 27 appearances. These include Myspace, Facebook, Apple’s iPhone, Pokemon Go and Zoom.
Next up were sporting events with 15 appearances, including several FIFA World Cups, the NBA and more than a handful of big cricket matches.
With eight appearances were natural disasters and accidents, including Hurricane Katrina, the 2005 tsunami, Ebola, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 and COVID-19.
Movies, TV shows and songs had seven results, including Harry Potter, The Matrix, American Idol, Gangnam Style and Black Panther.
Other top searches include the Ice Bucket Challenge, Paris, election results, Wordle and Ukraine.
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A group of climate protesters have been arrested in Germany after breaking into an airport and gluing themselves to the runway.
Six activists broke through security fencing at Munich airport in the German state of Bavaria on Saturday, according to the news outlet dpa.
Approximately sixty flights were canceled after the half-dozen protesters glued themselves to the tarmac, forcing officials to temporarily close the airport.
CLIMATE ACTIVISTS ARRESTED FOR BLOCKING AIRSTRIP IN MASSACHUSETTS
Climate activists lie on an access road for runways at the Munich airport. German officials and local media say authorities closed down Munich airport temporarily after six climate activists broke through a security fence and glued themselves to access routes leading to runways. ( (Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/dpa via AP))
An additional fourteen flights into Munich were forced to divert to other nearby airports to avoid the disruption.
Climate protest coalition Last Generation took credit for the stunt, claiming it was intended to draw attention to the German government’s inaction on the airline industry’s environmental impact.
CLIMATE GROUP TAKES RESPONSIBILITY FOR US OPEN CHAOS, OFFERS WARNING: ‘NO TENNIS ON A DEAD PLANET’
Climate activists stuck to a runway access road at Franz-Josef-Strauß Airport early Saturday morning. Climate protection activists paralyzed Munich Airport after breaking into the inner area of the airport grounds. The activists from the group Last Generation were protesting flying, the most polluting form of transportation, said the German news agency dpa on Saturday. (Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/picture alliance via Getty Images)
All six protesters were arrested and charged by law enforcement.
“Trespassing in the aviation security area is no trivial offense. Over hundreds of thousands of passengers were prevented from a relaxed and punctual start to their Pentecost holiday,” German Airports Association General Manager Ralph Beisel told dpa.
Police and firefighters stand on a runway access road at Franz-Josef-Strauß Airport around climate activists who have stuck themselves there. According to their own statements, members of the so-called Last Generation had planned to enter the airport grounds in order to block at least one of the two runways. (Photo: Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/dpa (Photo by Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/picture alliance via Getty Images))
“Such criminal actions threaten air traffic and harm climate protection because they only cause lack of understanding and anger,” German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser wrote about the protests on social media platform X.
The Munich incident was just one of many similar protests around the world against air transportation. Last Generation has performed at least two similar airport disruptions in Germany since last year.
Freezing hundreds of billions of dollars in lenders’ assets was part of dispute over gas project halted by sanctions.
A Russian court has ordered the seizure of the assets, accounts, property and shares of Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank in the country as part of a lawsuit involving the German banks, court documents showed.
The banks are among the guarantor lenders under a contract for the construction of a gas processing plant in Russia with the German company Linde. The project was terminated due to Western sanctions.
European banks have largely exited Russia after Moscow launched its offensive on Ukraine in 2022.
A court in St Petersburg ruled in favour of seizing 239 million euros ($260m) from Deutsche Bank, documents dated May 16 showed.
Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt said it had already provisioned about 260 million euros ($283m) for the case.
“We will need to see how this claim is implemented by the Russian courts and assess the immediate operational impact in Russia,” the bank added in a statement.
The court also seized the assets of Commerzbank, another German financial institution, worth 93.7 million euros ($101.85m) as well as securities and the bank’s building in central Moscow.
The bank is yet to comment on the case.
In a parallel lawsuit on Friday, the Russian court also ordered UniCredit’s assets, accounts and property, as well as shares in two subsidiaries, to be seized. The ruling covered 462.7 million euros ($503m) in assets.
UniCredit said it “has been made aware” of the decision and was “reviewing” the situation in detail. The bank was one of the most exposed European banks when Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine, with a large local subsidiary operating in Russia.
It began preliminary discussions on a sale last year, but the talks have not advanced. Chief executive Andrea Orcel said UniCredit wants to leave Russia, but added that gifting an operation worth three billion euros ($3.3bn) was not a good way to respect the spirit of Western sanctions on Moscow over the conflict.
Russia has faced heavy Western sanctions, including on its banking sector, since the start of the war in Ukraine. Dozens of US and European companies have also stopped doing business in the country.
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