Joshua Keating did what all of us have feared will happen at some point in our lives. He went through our search histories. Or, to be more precise, the search history of everybody on the planet. Here is what he found:

• Across the world people appear to have a fascination with celebrities – especially dead ones. Whitney Houston was the number one search term.
• Egypt had some of the most serious search terms. There were no pop culture references in the top ten and terms such as “Tahir Square” and “Mubarak trial” were high on the list.
• Burma, a country going through a democratic transition, was among the most searched terms in Saudi Arabia – perhaps an indicator of future political winds in the oil producing country.
• “Pulmonary carcinoid” was high on Japan’s list. Probably due to fears stemming from the Fukushima disaster.
• Russians were mostly interested in figuring out how to watch movies for free on the internet.
• India’s top two most searched terms were university entrance exams. Despite – or perhaps because of – this the number three most searched term was an Indian-American porn star who played the lead role in a mainstream Bollywood film this year.

See the full report of the most searched terms both across the world, and within various countries over here.

Source: Foreign Policy