Prince Charles googled
Britons wanted to know more about Prince Charles and the Royal family than anything else last year, according to Google’s 2003 “zeitgeist”.
Prince Charles in a statement in November publicly stated that newspaper rumours of a sexual act between a member of the Royal Family and a servant were strictly “untrue”.
But due to a High Court injunction, the alleged incidents could not be published in newspapers.
In the absence of printed material, Britons took to the internet to look for news about the “incident”.
Other than the courtly intrigues at the Royal household, the search engine found Briton’s were eager to know about soap opera Eastenders, pop icon Michael Jackson, Winnie the Pooh and rugby star Jonny Wilkinson, as well as Paris Hilton, The Simpsons and David Beckham.
No frills airline easyJet came in at number five in the list of top ten searches.
Google collated data from the astonishing 55 billion searches carried out by online users in 2003 to give a snapshot of popular global trends.
Topping the ten global searches was Britney Spears followed by Harry Potter, the Matrix film, Shakira, David Beckham, rap star 50 cent, news on Iraq, Lord of the Rings, Kobe Bryant and the Tour de France.
According to Yahoo, the file-sharing programme Kazaa was the most searched for item in 2003.
