Internet search giant Google has released its 2008 End-of-Year Zeitgeist, noting what was hot worldwide in Internet searches for the year. Unlike search engines like AOL and Yahoo who base their end-of-year summaries mostly on the frequency of terms—hence allowing Britney Spears to rule the search engine listings for years on end—Google bases its Zeitgeist both on frequency and on the novelty of terms. In other words, 2008’s zeitgeist is more about what users searched for in 2008 that they were not searching for in 2007. Google claims their method is more indicative of the “spirit of the times”…and it definitely produces some different results.
