I've just read this article from the BBC about the top 10 Google searches in 2006.For anyone who cant be bothered to read it the top 10 searches are:
1. Bebo
2. MySpace
3. World Cup
4. Metacafe (not the desperate housewives actor - though i'm sure some of his hits counted)
5. Radioblog
6. Wikipedia
7. Video
8. Rebelde
9. Mininova
10. Wiki
The article says a lot about how social networking sites and web 2.0 sites have dominated searches in 2006. In fact this very morning I signed upto facebook (yet another of these social networking sites like myspace, bebo, hi5, wayn, etc etc etc) so it shows how popular they are.
What the article fails to mention is the search on #9 of the list - yes Mininova, the popular (very popular according to this list) torrent sharing site for downloading music, TV Shows, Films and lots more pirated warez.
I'm surprised that the article doesn't mention how well known piracy is online and what a huge demand there is for on demand downloadable content. When will the industry realise this is what people want and that in a lot of cases they don't mind paying a bit for it.
It's ashame the BBC stay so politically correct when it comes to reporting these sorts of results, you will notice that on the right of the article there are links to Bebo, Myspace etc but not to Mininova. I wonder why...