Gangnam Style, the presidential election of 2012, Hurricane Sandy and Felix Baumgartner’s supersonic freefall; these are just a few of Google’s top searches featured in their Zeitgeist 2012: Year in Review video uploaded today.
Besides historic events, scientific discoveries, celebrity deaths and the top trending videos, the 2:46 digital capsule is also a sly advert for Google+. The camera pans over Google hangouts or videos obviously being watched on Google+, the social network often ridiculed for being a ghost town. Zeitgeist 2012 also highlighted YouTube’s livestreaming success by bookending the video with Felix Baumgartner’s record-breaking stunt (aka Red Bull Stratos’ marketing success).
What was noticably missing from Zeitgeist 2012 was any mention of porn. Everyone knows “the Internet is for porn,” and according to Google trends data, searches for porn easily dwarf searchs for, say, “Gangnam Style” which was featured in the 2012 Zeitgeist video. Kevin Stenbeck knows what I am talking about:
All jokes aside, the Google Zeitgeist site also features a Gangnam Style Easter egg.
