Know it all

Every day, we confide our pressing anxieties and trivial confusions to a single, all-knowing listener. Google Zeitgeist, a region-wise compilation of this data, is premised on the idea that the aggregations of all our billions of broken questions reveal nothing less than the spirit of the times. After all, Google is omniscient and omnipresent like the God of the Old Testament, and about as necessary as the electricity grid or sewage system. To search online is to Google, just as to Xerox was once to photocopy.

Do search volume trends really point to anything of substance? Siva Vaidyanathan, technology scholar and author of The Googlization of Everything has pointed out the absurdity of any accurate measurement or gleaning any wisdom from such figures, running a graph that asked: “Is John McCain more popular than a rash?” — even as  lawyers talk of introducing Google trends data into trial evidence and political campaigns search for answers. Spikes and dips in Google keywords can be arbitrary, sparked by the smallest events and manipulated with ease.

But on the other hand, if you’re not looking for an authoritative map of our deepest desires, Google trends are greatly satisfying. India’s search trends confirm lots of our gut judgments. That Bengal is football mad or that Kerala tops the suicide search may not be revelatory; but that Oriyas simply wanted “love” and that what most urban Indians urgently wonder about (after weight-loss) is “how to kiss” — has a certain sweet pathos.  And this Zeitgeist captures both space and time — as Sarah Palin and Katrina Kaif replace last year’s Carla Bruni or Britney Spears before that, Google search trends hold up a mirror to this peculiar moment and its fleeting preoccupations.