Google Zeitgeist 2012

Google's Zeitgeist page for 2012 has a lot of lists of popular searches from different categories and from different countries, so it's easy to find the people, the events, the games, the movies, songs and gadgets that defined the year 2012. It's important to keep in mind that most lists only include the queries with "the highest amount of traffic over a sustained period in 2012 as compared to 2011", so you won't find boring queries like [games] and [music], which are popular every year.

The "movers and shakers" of the year are:

1. Whitney Houston
2. Gangnam style
3. Hurricane Sandy
4. iPad 3
5. Diablo 3
6. Kate Middleton
7. Olympics 2012
8. Amanda Todd
9. Michael Clarke Duncan
10. BBB12 (Big Brother Brasil).

If you look back at the 2011 Zeitgeist list, you'll notice that "Gangnam style" replaces Rebecca Black, iPad 3 replaces both the iPhone 5 and the iPad 2, Diablo 3 replaces Battlefield 3.

The list of popular gadgets includes 6 tablets (iPad 3, iPad Mini, Nexus 7, iPad 4, Microsoft Surface and Kindle Fire), 3 phones (Galaxy S2, Galaxy Note 2, Nokia Lumia 920) and Sony's PlayStation. With so many interesting tablets released this year, it's hard to choose which one to buy.

Sometimes, Google's lists don't make a lot of sense, so you should take them with a grain of salt. Compare these 2 lists for US tech trends (for example, Note 2 is both more popular and less popular than iPhone 5):

Download the entire Zeitgeist collection [PDF] and don't miss the cool Easter Egg that shows a "Gangnam style" Android animation: mouse over the colorful bar at the bottom of the Zeitgeist page and click the robot.

{ Thanks, Arpit. }