Google's "Year in Search" says much about the searchers

Google calls it "The Year in Search 2014" - a snapshot of what people went looking for throughout the year.

The list used to be called the "Google Zeitgeist," but that name evidently was too self-congratulatory for even this self-congratulatory search-engine giant. Still, it says a little about human beings and what interests them. Just maybe, it says a lot.

Remember that, worldwide, the Internet/Web is a minority pursuit. Despite the withering hailstorm of overwrought self-promotion, only about 40 percent of humanity has access. Look at a "Facebook Map" of world connectivity (bit.ly/1K6YCm8). It shows bright activity in North America, Europe, industrialized South America, and parts of Asia, but large swaths of the world - much of Africa, Russia, and China, many inland regions - are all but silent.

About 1.17 billion people use Google. Only 16.7 percent of the world's supposed 7 billion folks, yes. But they are a rich, powerful, free-ranging 1.17 billion. Comfortable online, itchy, curious, they enter more than 40,000 searches a second, an estimated 1.2 trillion a year.

So, what subjects inspired all that googling? Here are the Top 10:

1. Robin Williams

2. World Cup

3. Ebola

4. Malaysia Airlines

5. ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

6. Flappy Bird

7. Conchita Wurst

8. ISIS

9. Frozen

10. Sochi Olympics

Skip first to numbers 5 through 7, the soft center of this sandwich, proof that the Net is full of young people doing silly stuff. The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, a viral madness of the summer, was a campaign both very successful and not. The ALS Association credits the fad with raising more than $100 million for research on amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Lou Gehrig's disease. That's good. But people forget: If you dumped ice water on yourself, you didn't have to donate. You could have silly fun and do nothing useful. Studies suggest most dumpees didn't donate.

Flappy Bird was/is/will be a crazy-mad-viral mobile video game, so popular in early 2014 (the story goes) that its Vietnamese maker withdrew it. It came back later as Flappy Bird's Family. And Conchita Wurst is the stage name of an Austrian man who sings in drag. His eerie live performance of the winning song in this year's Eurovision Song Contest set the Internet ablaze.

Other items show that people want to know what's going on. What irony: As newspapers and broadcast radio and TV decline, the ache persists to know the news. It's just that nobody wants to pay for it anymore.

The single most searched person in 2014 was the tragic comic Robin Williams. This speaks to his popularity and achievement over four decades, and to the terrible shock of his passing. If there was a cry of pain on the Net this year, this was it.

The Web world worried about the Ebola outbreak, which has killed more than 8,000 people in West Africa, according to the World Health Organization; the still-aching mystery of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared on March 8; and the rise of the Islamist group ISIS/ISIL/Islamic State, which burst into headlines in late June.

With such heavy anxieties, we yearn for play. Sure, the World Cup and Germany's shocking 7-1 semifinal shellacking of host Brazil - that was going to light the place up. The Sochi Olympics, too, with U.S. snowboarder (and failure) Shaun White the most-searched athlete, and ice hockey the most-searched event, especially in giddy Canada, which won gold.

New Jersey's governor, Chris Christie, placed second on the politicians list to President Obama. The most-searched celebrity was Jennifer Lawrence, beating out Kim Kardashian. (Perhaps stolen nude shots trump ones you publish on purpose.) The most-searched film was the ubiquitous Frozen, powered by the economic clout of kids. The most-searched podcast was the hit Serial. And the most-searched book was Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi.

People, the list declares, are people. They still want to know wh y dogs eat grass, how to wear a scarf, and how to travel the world (all topping various sublists). They're searching for the nearest Walmart, Starbucks, Target, and McDonalds. And they still want a good recipe for chicken, meatloaf, banana bread, or margaritas.

To paraphrase New York Times journalist and author Matt Richtel, our media help us be even more human than we already are. They extend what's natural - our gregariousness, curiosity, angst, love, inner child, and outer parent - as far as we can and further. When we search, we find ourselves.

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@jtimpane