Irish Examiner View: Everyone’s big brother

Google is such a fundamental part of our lives that the name of the company is now a synonym for searching.

Before we took to the online world with such gusto, it could be difficult to gauge what exactly people were interested in.

The old Irish expression about a topic being i mbéal an phobail — in the mouths of the public — was a vivid description of how that matter was dominating discussions, but how could one be more exact? To use the ultimate 21st-century question, where was the data?

We have that data now, of course. Google is such a part of people’s lives that its annual report of its most popular searches is synonymous with the identification of national and international interests.

For instance, the invasion of Ukraine has had an accompanying surge in related searches in Ireland — ‘What is Nato?’ and ‘What is an oligarch?’ have been popular requests on Google; the same for ‘What is the population of Ukraine?’

In sport, the current World Cup has been the top search; in show business, long-running legal battles have pushed Johnny Depp to the top of the search charts.

And yet none of those is the top search. That place is occupied by Wordle, the online word game that is now a well-established part of many people’s daily routine.

Oddly cheering

There’s something oddly cheering about such an inconsequential topic dominating online discourse rather than more serious topics. Variations of Wordle such as Heardle, Nerdle, and Foclach are also popular search topics, hinting at a strong public appetite for the reassurance of a harmless game of spelling.

It’s not quite as reassuring that a private enterprise holds so much information. Last month, Google reached a $392m (€371m) settlement with 40 US states following allegations that the company had continued to track consumers through their devices, despite the location tracking being turned off.

Such news is unlikely to give pause to users. Google is such a fundamental part of our lives that the name of the company is now a synonym for searching. You could Google it.