Mountain View (dpa) - Anyone who searches for information on Google usually leaves digital traces behind. The most common search terms in recent years are all-time classics such as "weather", "google", "facebook", "amazon", "youtube", "corona" or the latest iPhone generation.

But the data from the US search engine - the company was founded 25 years ago on September 4, 1998 - is also a reflection of social trends in Germany, if you look at the terms whose number of searches has increased many times over within a given year.

Search terms in trend

For example, searches for "firefox" show the most rapid increase when Mozilla releases its Internet browser in 2004. According to the company, Firefox 1.0 was downloaded more than 100 million times in less than a year.

The following year, in addition to the new satellite service Google Earth, the terms "tokio hotel" are among the rising stars of the year in Germany. The debut "Schrei" by the teen band from Magdeburg climbs to the top of the German charts in the fall.

In 2007, both "schülervz" and "schüler vz" are among the top five candidates for Google newcomers. The social network, an offshoot of "studiVZ", enjoys great popularity at the time - until Facebook becomes increasingly popular shortly afterwards.

In 2009, footballer Robert Enke is googled many times more often than before. The German national soccer goalkeeper, who suffered from depression for years, takes his own life in November at the age of 32.

In turn, her victory at the Eurovision Song Contest in May gives Lena Meyer-Landrut a place among the top three rising stars in Google searches in 2010. In 2011, increased entries for "kinox.to" and "movie2k.to" show that the fear of pirated copies of movies does not seem to be too great in Germany.

2014 is dominated by the Football World Cup in Brazil. "wm2014" and "wm" are the top two newcomers of the year. And Michael Schumacher is also searched for a lot on Google. The former Formula 1 world champion suffered a serious skiing accident at the end of 2013.

The search for "pokemon go" is the latest Google hit in 2016. The game for smartphones and tablets is launched on the market at the time and lets players search for animals in the real world. Curious: in 2017, one of the five top climbers is the search for "kalender 2018".

The year 2020 is again dominated by the pandemic: "corona", "coronavirus", "corona deutschland", "corona zahlen", "corona aktuell" and "corona bayern" are the top search terms in the year's trends - ahead of "us election", which in November is about Donald Trump's ultimately unsuccessful stay in office.

The current year has so far been dominated by artificial intelligence (AI): "chatgpt" and "chat gpt" are at the top of the search trends in 2023. Among other things, users let the AI chatbot formulate texts and create presentations.