Google is a wonder of the age, but it can’t read your mind — not yet

IT’S the word of the century so far. Just when the search engine launched back in 1998 became a verb — “to google” — no one quite knows, but many of us google something, anything, dozens of times a day.

Apparently, officially, Stephen Gately was the most searched for term last year in Ireland, but the suspicion is that words like “sex”, “porn” and “hangover” feature highly, as do the names of some of its rivals such as Facebook (privately owned) and Hotmail (owned by Microsoft).

Whether it’s Google — and they do have around 80% of the market — or another search term, we have come to rely on them.